My ongoing war with bittersweet, a nasty, invasive vine that slowly and stealthily strangles prey during spring and summer while camouflaged with green leaves, gains an edge in autumn, when its foliage turns luminescent yellow.

Bittersweet also produces bright red and orange berries this time of year, making it an even easier target so I can move in for the kill.

For the past week, I’ve been prowling the forest, armed with loppers and a mattock, eyes peeled for gold-festooned strands that coil around tree trunks like anacondas. After hacking away at these vines, I rip up their roots, which can snake underground in a divide-and-conquer maneuver.

Failing to take a stand against bittersweet, widely imported decades ago as a decorative plant but in recent years regarded as a horticultural nightmare, will lead to annihilation of everything in its path, from mighty oaks to rhododendrons. A bittersweet invasion is the botanical version of Grant taking Richmond.

My neighbor escalates his combat to a more sinister level by dabbing the ends of bittersweet roots with a commercial weedkiller that contains the herbicide glyphosate, but I stick to conventional weapons — not just because a multi-million-dollar class-action lawsuit has linked the product to non-Hodgkin lymphoma, but also because its use violates my personal version of the Geneva Conventions.

By restricting myself to commando-style fighting rather than chemical warfare, I’m resigned to a protracted campaign — more like the Hundred Years’ War than the Six-Day War. So be it.

My autumnal bittersweet battle coincides with a host of other chores. Once the long, fun-filled season of swimming, biking, kayaking and otherwise goofing off winds down, it’s time to get to work.

First up: putting the garden to bed. Last weekend, I dug up the last of the potatoes, pulled up tomato cages, raked the soil of remaining weeds and dumped withered plants into the compost heap. Sadly, I also took apart the makeshift trellis system I labored on years ago in the vain hope it would support a healthy crop of table grapes.

Beetle infestations, a shortage of pollinating bees and hungry birds all combined to reduce my entire yield to one measly grape. It was sour, to boot.

Next year, I’ll plant something in that space that’s easier to grow.

The other day, I also toiled a few hours pruning blueberry bushes and preparing to repair a wood-and-net enclosure I built to keep out birds needs repair. Nothing is ever simple to grow.

I take that back. Garlic has to be the easiest edible plant to propagate. These past few years, the bulbs even seed themselves. The only thing I have to do soon is cover the bed with crushed leaves.

Speaking of leaves, it looks like I’ll have to wait another few weeks before they all come down. Every fall, I rake tons of them into barrels, which I lug to the compost heap as well as to my tree nursery.

Neighbors also drop off their bags of leaves, or leave them in front of their homes for me to pick up. You can’t have too many leaves for mulching and composting.

Last week, I transplanted 160 seedlings from the nursery to the woods around our house, helping replace trees I’ve felled for firewood. Being a backyard lumberjack normally is a year-round enterprise, but thanks to last week’s roaring winds, I’ve been busy sawing up toppled trees and splintered limbs. I’ll write about the joys and travails of heating exclusively with wood soon, when the stoves are going round-the-clock.

Fall is also a good time to repair stone walls that line a network of paths around our house, and to mark the maples as a reminder of which ones to tap in late winter for making syrup.

Maple leaves in fall are even more dazzling than bittersweet, and seeing them glow always reminds me of Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Autumn.”

The morns are meeker than they were,

The nuts are getting brown;

The berry's cheek is plumper,

The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,

The field a scarlet gown.

Lest I should be old-fashioned,

I'll put a trinket on.