During a day of various kinds of piddling around, one chore was getting the worst of the wisteria out of the persimmon in front of the house. The wisteria has the pergola to climb on, but naturally it wants to expand its power base. It got cut back hard--massacred--about two and a half years ago when we had the foundation work done and a new pergola installed, and then afterwards I didn't prune it much for a year or two. Well, it's back.

The persimmon, meanwhile, gets a little bigger every year. It was a sapling when we bought the property; now it's a tree, reaching this year to the power line that runs to the top of our three story house. It too grows over the pergola, leaning on it like a kind of horizontal espaliering: this makes it harder to keep the wisteria out of it, but I like the effect. I'm not sure, giving the density of all the plants competing for space, that it makes the persimmons themselves easier to reach as I would like.

The last major member of the plant community striving to take over the pergola is 'Archduke Joseph'. It started out about twenty years ago as a miniscule cutting grown plant. Then it grew, as did the persimmon. Then I had to decide what to do when the persimmon started to shade out the growing rose. Both by that time were too large to move. I wasn't too hopeful about this, but I tied canes of 'Archduke Joseph' through the persimmon, and from that point both grew together, getting larger every year. I'm not sure the persimmon likes the competition, but both survive, grow, and flower/fruit, so all is more or less well. 'Archduke Joseph' grows through and over the persimmon as well as onto the pergola: the top of its growth is somewhat above my eye level as I look out from my first floor (above ground floor) bedroom window. It's trying right now to bloom, but I think doesn't have enough light and warmth to open its many buds. I estimate it to be about eighteen feet tall, with a considerable spread.