Laurels and Barbs #1

This week I drove from State College to Baltimore, and instead of listening to Toby from Elmo stump the chumps, I was appalled by what I saw along the highway. Any time you see in early September a roadside that looks like an Autumn scene - dried up plants, red leaves on the sumac and wilted milkweed - you can bet the prairie that herbicides have been sprayed. I was so appalled, I was DWI. Driving While Irritated.

Along the highways in Pennsylvania there were stretches of road where ALL of the vegetation within sprayer range had been Agent Oranged. Some of this was in hard-to-reach places and was getting sort of tall for the edge of a highway, but much of it was neither tall nor in a place that a brush cutter couldn't reach. PennDoT had simply decided that a preemptive strike was in order, and left behind an ugly, lifeless roadside wasteland. If you're going to take a drive to enjoy the fall wildflowers I know a couple of highways I wouldn't recommend.

And then I crossed the Mason-Dixon Line...

Along Interstate 70 MDOT is using herbicides to kill Ailanthus trees. Groves of these invasive weeds stand dead, while others have just been sprayed and are in the process of dying. Nearby grass was green and wildflowers were blooming. Highway right-of-ways are often the first places an invasive plant thrives before spreading into the surrounding countryside, and it is nice to see MDOT taking action to stop at least one species of invasive plant from spreading any further without blackening the whole roadside.

LAURELS to MDOT...BARBS to PENNDOT!