Roe vs. Wade.\u00a0 Brown vs. Board of Education.\u00a0 Joe vs. the Volcano.\u00a0 Anna Kate vs. Ivy.<\/p>\n
As in, leafy green English ivy.\u00a0 Ivy is such an oxymoron.\u00a0 It is beautiful and delicate.\u00a0 It flows gracefully from planters.\u00a0 The variegated kind is especially beautiful with its mix of dark and light green.\u00a0 Visually appealing.\u00a0 But ivy, like kudzu and wisteria, has a deep dark secret.\u00a0 It kills.\u00a0 It sucks the life out of trees and plants.\u00a0 It rips the paint off of your house.\u00a0 It will even dig its way into mortar and cement.\u00a0 It is evil.<\/p>\n
Our house has a very nice yard.\u00a0 It is beautifully landscaped with an array of lush southern foliage.\u00a0 It was well maintained 12 – 15 years ago.\u00a0 The base plants are still there but it is now overgrown and leggy.\u00a0 And there is ivy everywhere.\u00a0 It is on every tree, in every bush, and twisted around every branch in our yard.<\/p>\n
I am on a mission.\u00a0 When I am done, the ivy will be minimal and the plants will be free.<\/p>\n
My father got me started about a month ago.\u00a0 He is a master gardener and I am jealous.\u00a0 My father can grow anything.\u00a0 I hope to get there someday.\u00a0 Anyway, we were walking through the back yard looking at the ivy roots on the base of the two big trees back there.\u00a0 Before I could blink, he was hacking away at the roots.\u00a0 This ivy had grown roots about 2 inches in diameter.\u00a0 They had grown so far into the bark of the tree that it took all our strength to pry them off.\u00a0 Luckily we got the roots severed so the ivy in the tree is starting to die.\u00a0 Whew.\u00a0 Trees saved.<\/p>\n
This past weekend was our first bout of great weather since we moved here.\u00a0 It was 65 degrees and sunny.\u00a0 Prime yard work weather.\u00a0 On Saturday, I headed out to the front yard in my grubby clothes to liberate the Japanese maple.\u00a0 I pulled ivy for about 4 hours.\u00a0 The ivy was wrapped around the base of the maple like that was its job.\u00a0 I pulled and yanked and yelled and wrestled and grunted and wailed and moaned and gnashed my teeth.\u00a0 Three leaf bags full of ivy and I was done.\u00a0 Spent.\u00a0 Over and out.<\/p>\n
That was Saturday.\u00a0 Today is Monday.\u00a0 My back feels like someone beat me with a Louisville slugger.\u00a0 My palms are sore.\u00a0 My yard gloves have more epithelials than your local crime lab.\u00a0 I walked to meet the bus and I’m sure the neighbors thought Igor was on the loose.\u00a0 I’ve taken more Advil in the last 48 hours than I have in the last 4 – 8 years.<\/p>\n
But that will not stop me.\u00a0 I will win.\u00a0 I will shut down the ivy operations.\u00a0 I will save my yard.\u00a0 It will be beautiful.\u00a0 I might have to look at it lovingly through the windows from my traction set up in the living room but I WILL WIN!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Roe vs. Wade.\u00a0 Brown vs. Board of Education.\u00a0 Joe vs. the Volcano.\u00a0 Anna Kate vs. Ivy. As in, leafy green…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[162,163,164],"class_list":["post-297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thoughts","tag-ivy","tag-versus","tag-yard-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":300,"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions\/300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}