What a tragic romance. I fall in love and support a guy for three years, dreaming all the while of children. Then one day I find out his true identity on the Internet.

He's an outlaw and I have no choice but to plot his murder.

This is the soap opera that's playing out between me and a shrub.

We met in 2005. I was a na•ve, enthusiastic young gardener. He was a loner standing in the backyard among the lilacs. I fell for his silvery-green foliage and his persistence in growing where nobody wanted him to grow.

I liked him so much that I made plans for how I would cut branches and propagate little versions of him to plant around the yard. I had seen similar shrubs growing in the wild, so I felt good about filling my landscape with something local rather than exotic nursery stock.

My husband, instinctively, was suspicious. He suggested I cut him down or at least move him out of the lilacs.

Foolishly, I protected the shrub.

He grew taller and fuller at an alarming rate. By this summer he had grown twice as tall as the lilacs and become as prominent a feature in the backyard as the two maples. He was magnificent.

Then one day I saw a picture in a book and did a double-take. Could that be my shrub? The book was about native plants and the invasive species that threaten their existence. There in the section on invasives was my guy. The caption called him an autumn olive.

I rushed to the Internet to find out more. The story gets worse.

Not only is he a foreign invader, his name is on a "most wanted" list. Autumn olive propagation has been banned in Massachusetts since 2006, along with such villains as purple loosestrife and kudzu.

My blood ran cold. I felt betrayed.

I found out that autumn olive, who goes by the alias Elaeagnus umbellata, was imported to the United States from Japan in 1830. For years it was planted by well-intentioned people and even highway departments to stabilize soil and provide food for birds. Then around the 1980s it escaped cultivation and has since become a menace to living creatures everywhere.

The shrub is powerful because it can grow on nitrogen from the air, rather than having to pull it from fertile soil as most plants do. That allows it to grow in poor soil and to quickly take over fields and disturbed land.

It grows much faster than native plants and blocks the sun so they can't grow. Most insects here cannot eat autumn olive. Birds who rely on those insects to feed their babies end up with less food, and fewer babies survive.

Adult birds do eat autumn olive berries, though, and inadvertently spread the shrub's seed all over the place.

As soon as I realized this, I took a closer look at the weeds in my backyard. It was a revelation. Everywhere I looked, I saw little autumn olive seedlings pushing up toward the sun.

I went on a rampage, pulling them by the roots. How silly I was to think I would want to propagate this species. What I really need to do is eliminate it.

So now I am plotting a murder. After some research, I have chosen my method: chopping down my magnificent shrub and immediately painting Roundup on the stump.

My husband has agreed to be an accessory to the murder. All I need is a place to dump the body.

Julie Kirkwood is a freelance writer for The Eagle-Tribune. Her column, Yard Dirt, appears most Wednesdays. She also keeps a gardening blog, Yard Dirt: Sharing Seeds, at www.eagletribune.com.