One morning a plant appeared on a porch.

It was a single leaf standing up on a stalk that looked a bit like celery sticking out of a red solo cup.

That leaf grew until it took over an entire wall, 6' tall and 30' at least in runners and vines spreading in all directions inside the dining room. 

That plant had plans to take over the house.

The owners could not abide.

Wholesale slaughter, massacre.

The plant was trimmed to a fraction of its former glory

All hope for home domination lost

worst of all

seeing all those hard-earned leaves sitting in a maple sap bucket

the wasted photosynthesis

all the phototropic feet retracted like a measuring tape

now only the size of a slap bracelet

Alas, what's this

A new bucket of soil

full of mycorrhiza 

and now the sap buckets are multiplying

there are as many of them as there are shorn leaves

and ah

what luck

the loss of leaves was a brutality

but now they extend beyond the known universe 

of a dining room 

and into a living room

and a kitchen

and out into the unknown

It was so hard to see those leaves taken away

They were held close and nourished and connected

Only real growth could be achieved

through the culling and replanting

as the mountain touches the valley