Friday 5 - landscaping 2nd edition

1. I realized days too late that among the regular ivy that I've been pulling, there is and has been poison ivy. And I wasn't wearing a long sleeve shirt when I spent 5 days pulling ivy last week. So that happened. I didn't know much about poison ivy but now I know the rash is a slow burn that gets worse every day. Libby has a steroid cream that she has to use on eczema and the internet says I can use that on poison ivy if it's in the first few days. I hope I am still in that window but it has been more than a few days. The itch is not very bad, it's just troubling that the rash continues to spread and get worse. In other news, my cuts on both thumbs have resolved but one on my right hand is still infected and puffy. This is from an injury that I sustained through my gardening gloves. So, lessons: wear long sleeves. Wear fitted leather gloves. I guess the flimsy little regular gardening gloves are ok when you're just playing in dirt but not when you are attacking an unrelenting jungle. I wear leather gloves when I'm doing blackberries and wood chipper but they were too bulky for ivy pulling, I thought...

2. I finally got word that my replacement wood chipper will arrive next Wednesday. That will be a good day. I have so many piles of branches everywhere you look. I'm excited to chop them up.

3. I finished Mae's path down to the creek. Next, while I'm waiting for my wood chipper, I'm working on clearing an area in my front yard that is full of blackberries, a vine I don't know what it is but hopefully not poison ivy, and a whole bunch of random shrubs. The blackberry is certainly an issue but the vine is possibly worse. Remove!! Don't trim, remove!! In past years I only trimmed back this area. This is an area I have actually cleaned up every single year and it just comes back as if I did nothing. But I have my new mantra now, Remove to Improve. I got some stump killer that you paint on with a paintbrush. I'm going to remove every bit of the blackberries and paint the little stumps. I'm going to find the source of crazy vine and remove it or at least paint it as well. There is a tree I have chopped down 3 times and I'm going to take a chainsaw to it and paint the remaining stump.

4. Several years ago we had raspberries and although I pulled them a few years later, a few canes came back up last year and I let them stay as long as they behave and stick to their little cage. So we have some raspberries this year and I pick them for Mae just like I used to and she still loves them. It makes me so happy to do this for her.

5. Since the kids like hammocks and swings so much, I'm looking for a suitable place to hang one. You would think I could find a suitable place but so far I have not. But it is possible that after I clear more shrubs something ideal will emerge...