According to the bumper sticker, “Hatred is not a family value.” But in this case, hatred is a virtue. Hatred is essential, noble, a sacred obligation.

Bountiful rainfall this year produced a banner growth of native grasses: big and little bluestem, indiangrass, switchgrass, sideoats gramma – along with beneficial forbs and legumes such as Illinois bundleflower, showy partridgepea, maxmilian sunflower. Unfortunately, it has also produced an infestation of odious weeds: musk thistle, bindweed and, above all the vile, malicious perennial legume, sericea lespedeza, an enemy worthy of rabid hatred.

In a maddening irony, sericea was introduced and promoted for forage and erosion control by the USDA. It is now designated “noxious” and landowners who fail to control it face penalties. Sericea is like kudzu in southern states — invasive, ruthlessly prolific, capable of out-competing other plants. Call it the ISIS of the plant world. At this time of year, my life is devoted to battling sericea. I spend hours seeking it out on my ATV, armed with a sprayer filled with powerful herbicide. I see myself as belonging to a brotherhood of sericea haters. The enormity of our loathing is attested by an Internet sericea chat room: “Kill it quickly….” “”I hate that stuff…,” “I’ve been battling it for 30 years…”

This year, vast colonies of the green foe cover the ground, and I attack it with a mixture of fury and futility. My dog Lulu rides at my side. She’d rather be on the ground chasing dragon flies and swallows. To paraphrase Heraclitus, “She rests by running.” But it’s too hot to let her go. She has no common sense. She’d run herself to death. Fortunately, she’s a good dog and heeds my command, “Sit still!” Wait! Where is she? Gone like a bolt of lightning in pursuit of some avian tormentor. Well, let her pursue her folly as I pursue mine. Let her dream that some day she will miraculously sprout wings and be able to purse her elusive quarry in the sky.

The bugle summons. The Devil is at large. I soldier on. I must sow death before the enemy flowers, for then the enterprise is lost. Of course, as in any war, there are grave moral issues, such as “collateral damage.” To destroy Sericea, I must sometimes kill innocent plants nearby. And I’m releasing poison into the environment to save the environment. Who knows? I might be creating a species of monstrous, mutant, man-eating grasshoppers. The spray pump chugs like a burp gun, filling me with a sense of murderous power. Have I gone mad?

Some day, no doubt, members of a Friends of Sericea Lespediza association will show up beating tom-toms and chanting “Stop the killing.” I invite them to consider a world with no pansies, no roses, no daffodils, no grass, no vegetables, a world in which only sericea exists, a world in which corsages are made exclusively of the flowers of the noxious fiend.

— George Gurley, a resident of rural Baldwin City, writes a regular column for the Journal-World.