It began to rain on the morning of August 28, 2011. It had been a very wet summer so you could hear people groaning everywhere.

The rain was heavy, soaking. The trees bowed their heads, and folks began to watch the rivers and streams as they approached bank full. By late afternoon, the water lapped at the edges of roads. Debris of all sorts—natural and manmade—floated downstream.

By the time the rains from Hurricane Irene finally stopped, eleven and a half inches of water had dropped on our already saturated soils. Some houses were washed away. Others were damaged. Some bridges disappeared. And so did some roads.

My family lives on one of the tributaries of the Connecticut River, the waterway that divides Vermont from New Hampshire, called the White River. It is undammed. Before it flows by our house, five smaller rivers contribute their water to the whole as do countless streams. In all, the White rose 30 feet over 12 hours, coming within inches of our home.

Yeah, heart-in-mouth times all right.

One of the things we know about our riverine neighbor is that she goes back down as fast as she comes up, once the rain stops. By 7:00 the next morning, she was flowing very fast but had withdrawn her claim on the roads and wetlands.

But she left behind 18 to 24 inches of silt on our riparian land. All the smaller plants were smothered.

Or so we thought.

About two weeks into our hurricane recovery, my husband took a walk down the length of our land to its most northern point. The mud was so fierce, it literally sucked the boots right off his feet.

We recovered them weeks later.

When Jay got to the northern point of our land, he found a 12-inch piece of Japanese knotweed root sitting on the shore. And at every one-inch increment, new roots had appeared, seeking footholds in the soil. This amazing invasive has expanded its territory on our flood plain ever since.

Not too long ago, I spotted an ad in Estuary Magazine for Sotheby’s Real Estate. They run a different picture with an interesting fact in each of their ads. And in this particular issue, there was a photo of Japanese knotweed in bloom, just like the one at the top of this post. And the interesting fact? Did you know that Japanese knotweed can survive being buried in lava?

I had to know more. So I jumped over to Wikipedia to get a start. And there I found out that the European responsible for bringing this foul invasive over from Japan (Philipp Franz von Siebold) found the first plant on the edge of a volcano’s crater. He brought it home to the Netherlands. Then in 1850, he gave a specimen to Kew Gardens in London.

And from there, it spread all over the world, demonstrating its immortality over and over through herbicide attacks, excavations, repeated mowings, being covered with black plastic, cement, etc. etc. etc.

Immortality is, in my opinion, overrated.