May 24, 2004
damn you poison ivy!!
Every year I have a war with poison ivy. This year it seems ironic that I've been beating the hell out of the poison ivy with chemical warfare when I'm begging and pleading the world to stop the war.
Oh well.
In counting up the patches of poison ivy that I have, we now stand at seven, I have sprayed or removed six. (It's been raining and I'd rather not have the stuff I'm spraying just run into the water that ends up in Cayuga Lake.)
I felt fairly in control of the situation, knowing where the stuff is always helps. I felt in control as long as I was walking on the grassy part of our property and along the edges of the woods.
Of course today I decided to plan the front gardens that have been fallow (if you can call being under a layer of black plastic being fallow) for three years.
(We had the undesireable Japanese knot weed growing there and it's nearly impossible to get out. When you dig it up, the roots split and sliver and you just can't pull all the root pieces out. So we had to just kill it. RoundUp works, but you have to chop down the plant to about four inches above the soil and then it just kills that plant. The roots are still partying for the most part. We just had to keep snapping off the stalks as they came up and spraying whatever was left. We're close to getting rid of it now. Only three years!)
At any rate, I decided that I wanted some more ferns in the front gardens than I had available. I decided that a great place for ferns would be in the woods behind our house. I was scouting them and gingerly picking my way through the undergrowth and was assessing some ferns when I noticed the damned plant caressing my little ankles.
Why?! Why must we torment each other so? I have a tiny spot of it on my right hand, but had nothing else until my ankles were covered in it.
Angry little bastard of a plant.
So I was calm. I went upstairs and took a shower (cool water to start; I didn't want to spread the itch oil around) using Burt's Bath Poison Ivy Soap. It doesn't smell like anything except victory over three-leaf poison son of a bitch plants that tackle my hands and arms and feet! Son of a bitch!
