III: Asparagus

You might think you know what asparagus looks like, but you've probably only seen baby asparagus. That's what you buy at the store, cook, and enjoy. I've seen the adults, and they're horrible. I had a house once with an unruly backyard, and there was a particularly noxious and woody weed in one corner that was as tall as an adult, covered in voluminous fronds, sticky, and producing tiny red berries that nothing seemed to want to eat. I had no idea what it was, but it was shedding all over the place and I knew I wanted no more of it, so I dug it up by the roots. Or so I thought. A few weeks later, asparagus was growing out of the ground! The root was, after much digging, more than a foot deep into the ground and full of rope-like fingers that were horrifying to see. No matter how many times I dug the same patch and yanked out fingers, in a few weeks, more asparagus would pop their little heads up. So it's a wonderful, hardy, persistent plant if you want to grow it on purpose, and a huge pain if you don't.