done and yet to do

So the good news is that I finished the Ivy thwacking on the south side of the house. Yes, it’s true, this is the south side; it’s so shady that it has only grown this much.  Can you imagine how huge of an Ivy mass it would be if it actually got southern sun all the time?  *Gasp*  So here is my triumphant photo of the south side, complete with path and edge and paving stones leading to the hose and AC and so forth.

I found so many things lurking beneath the surface of the Ivy:  2 footballs, a soccer ball, ninja turtle, he-man, sprinkler, hose coupler, notebook, landscaping boulders, a mini-picket fence around the Rose of Sharon (why??), and last (although I know I have forgotten some things) bedroom slippers.  Those last ones had me worried when I raked them up.  I know I have been watching/reading too much detective fiction, but I was sure I’d find a dead body or something, so when I saw those, I thought they’d have feet in them or something.  As I was doing all this, our next door neighbour came out and chatted and among other things said that she thinks the prior residents were cooking meth in the (now) guest bedroom.  You see why I worry/think about these seemingly crazy things?  Maybe not so crazy.  Oh!  And I did find a toad.  He was cool.  I took him to hang out with the other toad I found in the front flowerbed.  Please don’t tell me, oh toad experts out there, that toads do not live in harmony with each other.  I prefer to think they are long lost relatives or something.   So now we have a toad condo going on under the front hose hide-out.

So that is my exciting news although I know it isn’t exciting for most of you and you are probably thinking that these photos look an awful lot like the photos from before I did anything.  Well, this is because we had a lot of rain right before I took this photo and all the Ivy rejoiced and lifted up their heads and proclaimed their defiance of she-who-wields- the-rake and their intention to live long and be glossy.  I assure you, they looked like crap yesterday.  sigh.

Although I must say I utter an even heavier sigh when I look at these:

Ah yes.  And you were feeling so triumphant with me.  No, no. We’ve only just begun, and the next words are not “to live.” No, this is not a Carpenters’ song; this is the on going saga, only I am about to unleash my secret weapon.  Early on in the battle of the vines, I had brought out the lawnmower.  The Ivy saw and despaired.  It then entered upon secret negotiations with the grass and the rest of nature in general.  Yes, it’s true, I kid you not.  So I’m innocently mowing the grass when a suicide bomber rock who had been lurking in the grass cast itself before me in its final self-sacrificial act for the good of the landscape.  The Ivy had trained it well and I hit it pretty hard.  It split in half but I also bent the blade of the lawn mower so thoroughly that David thought I had bent the whole shaft making the mower useless.  Nature held its collected breath in hope.  Alas for it, all we have to do is replace the blade, not the mower.  HAH!  And, because I want to take no risks, I am thinking of borrowing a riding mower to mow over all the remaining Ivy. hah HAH!  I will WIN!!  But don’t tell the Ivy what I’m planning because heaven knows what it will do next in revenge.  The very fact that in writing about it I have upgraded it to a capital “I” indicates that I take the threat seriously.  Oh and I still have to do the north side of the house of which I haven’t taken photos because I am pretending it doesn’t exist.  There are no windows there; you can’t see it.  Therefore, it’s not real.

As I speak, David is about to start demolition of the laundry room so stay tuned for exciting photos of that.

Thanks for putting up with the Ivy Chronicles (he he he anyone read that book?)

wb