O'Brady wins 10 pts and the opportunity to sit in a locked car with SWAC driving from Georgia to Texas. During the drive, Obrady will have to listen to SWAC give the history of DBAT, along with a verbal player profile of each DBAT kid that has signed, and a contrast and comparison to DBAT and the Roman Empire...enjoy! It should take about 12 hours.
Kudzu - - The Vine That Ate The South
Kudzu is native to Japan and China, however it grows well in the Southeastern United States. Kudzu is a vine that when left uncontrolled will eventually grow over almost any fixed object in its proximity including other vegetation. Kudzu, over a period of several years will kill trees by blocking the sunlight and for this and other reasons many would like to find ways to get rid of it. The flowers which bloom in late summer have a very pleasant fragrance and the shapes and forms created by kudzu vines growing over trees and bushes can be pleasing to the eye during the summer months.
The following statement appeared in an agricultural bulletin in 1928, about 20 years after it was first introduced in Florida as a forage crop. "Kudzu is not without disadvantages. It is slow and expensive in getting established, is exacting in requiring only moderate grazing and mowing, is deceptive about its real yield, especially to those who do not know it well, and sometimes becomes a pest."
In the south where the winters are moderate the first frost will turn kudzu into dead leaves and soon after just gray vines. The kudzu vine will continue growing the next summer almost from where it was stopped by cold weather the previous year. Around here it seems most folks don't pay much attention to kudzu and maybe that is because there isn't much we can do about it except temporarily kill it with herbicide or let livestock graze on it when it gets to be too much of a problem. The warm, wet summer we had in 2005 made it look like a rain forest in places and the dry summer of 2006 didn't seem to have slowed kudzu down at all. Unusually low temperatures in the spring of 2007 caused kudzu to get off to a late start, however, it caught up rapidly during the hot and exceptionally dry summer of 2007 and is off to a good start in 2008.
Kudzu vines will cover buildings and parked vehicles over a period of years if no attempt is made to control its growth. A number of abandoned houses, vehicles and barns covered with kudzu can be seen in Georgia and other southern states. Many of the photos of kudzu shown on this web site were taken in the vicinity of Dahlonega, Georgia, a beautiful historic town in the mountains of North Georgia best known as the site of the first major gold rush in the U.S. in 1828.
Sincerely,
