Garden Conquest

It's not that looks can be deceiving
actually more that experience aids
in evaluating the effects of
introducing botanical specimens
of little-understood habit to an 
otherwise well-ordered garden.
How was I to know that my initial
rapture on beholding the sweet
shapely leaves in their beguiling
colours was a excused a clever 
disguise for a garden thug? Even 
its nomenclature is intriguing. True
the Harlequin vine brings vibrant 
colour and form to the garden
at first admired and then regarded 
with a twinge of alarm as its habit of 
creeping out of its assigned place is 
first noted, foreshadowing its covertly 
successful rampage toward garden 
conquest. And to think I regarded it as a
delicate plant, exquisitely exotic!
Now those exotic and colourful
vines are everywhere I look, crowding
out their neighbours, competing for
space and sustenance, sending up
lovely little white floral offerings
as a signal of truce it has no
intention whatever of honouring.