Kudzu and Kentucky

I'm in Bowling Green tonight, getting ready for my interview tomorrow. When I got in and checked my e-mail, I had a message from the Myrtle Beach paper -- they want to talk to me about openings there.

Everyone's timing is a couple days out of whack with mine. When I go down south, I get calls from 8 hours north. When I'm here, I get messages from down there. But, this is what I came for, so no complaints. Besides, at this point, we're just going to talk, and I don't have to drive for that.

As I drove through the Carolinas and the Smoky Mountains, I really noticed the kudzu vine. I didn't realize what it was at first, because we don't have it in California, that I know of. Along the sides of the road, it's just green for miles. Trees everywhere -- it must be amazingly beautiful in the fall. Every so often, there are these groves of kind of eerie shapes, covered in silvery-green leaves. The kudzu vine has enveloped the trees so now they look like figures draped in furry green sheets.

The kudzu vine will kill the trees underneath it, but it's beautiful, though I feel kind of bad for liking the kudzu. It's an invader, and I'm admiring it as it's feeding on another life.