revenge of the ivy

There were so so many possible titles I could have used for this posting.  So many, that I feel I must share with you just a few so you can get an idea of my day, plus I need to keep you in suspense for a few minutes since I know you’re dying for the next installment of the ivy chronicles.  Possibilities:

1. Blood sport, starring The Ivy

2. Another thing on which David does not want to spend his time

3. Maybe the neighbours won’t notice, let’s hope they don’t read this blog.

4. And round 6 goes to…. The Ivy!

David actually had a really good title, but neither of us can remember what it was because we are both so exhausted after dealing with The Ivy’s latest dirty dealing.  Oh yes.  You won’t believe, gentle reader, you just won’t.

So there I am, grubby clothes on, mowing shoes at the ready, lawn mower set, and I turn and give a cheery wave in the direction of the house and merrily say, “I’m done with all this raking business.  I’m just going to mow The Ivy over in the side flower bed.”  I turn and set off on my way to try out my new scheme when all of a sudden I stop.  You won’t believe.  You remember that suicide rock The Ivy convinced to sacrifice itself?  Oh that was nothing.  The Ivy brought out the big guns this time.  Check this out.

Need I say more?  Probably not.  But of course, I will.  I will say that The Ivy I was planning to mow is directly under that limb.  I kid you not.  Can you believe it?

Here is a photo with David in the picture to give you a sense of how big it was.
We measured the biggest part and it is 14″ diameter, which is reasonably large.  And yes, that is the neighbours’ house it is mostly resting on.  And yes again (you are so observant) those are our dining room windows that it is near to smashing.   Well I always knew we needed a chainsaw, but alas, David climbed up on the neighbours’ roof (after ascertaining they weren’t home, he he he) and with the trusty Sawzall, proceeded to cut away.  With lots of careful cutting and using various ropes, we managed to get it down to here:

I used my whole body weight hauling on one end of a rope and David lifted more weight than he should have, I’m sure, but we damaged nary a window, nor a roof.  In case you’re wondering, this is David stomping on The Ivy.  Up to now, he has tolerated with amusement my rantings about said Ivy.  No longer.  He is now a true believer.

No photos of that lowering the limb process because neither Jan nor Smeer was available.  This is what they were doing:

Smeer was helping by sweeping   and Jan was supervising

and he was also checking to see if he thought his diapers were bleached enough.  I believe the whole business met with his approval because he did communicate all about it with the far away planet this evening as usual.

We did manage to get our hands on Troy’s chainsaw – hooray!  Which means the limb is cut into pieces that are more or less manageable.  So the moral of this story is that The Ivy thought it had really done us some damage this time.  However, not only did it only set us back a couple of hours, it provided us with lots of firewood and that corner of the house will now be much sunnier!  Yay!  AND, look what we did as soon as we had moved the limb!!!!  

As you can see, David is quite enjoying his revenge.  Here are some last ditch, pathetic attempts on the part of The Ivy to thwart us.  Various objets d’art that it had hidden to leap out at us:  

Really rather sad, don’t you think?  Perhaps it has come to terms with its immanent demise.

There is still a small-ish dent/bend in the neighbours’ gutter that David will have to fix and there is a rather humungous  pile of branches to trim and make into decent sized firewood.  And then there is, of course, all The Ivy to mow over that we didn’t get to today but I plan to do tomorrow, barring any new attempts to hold off TOTAL ANNIHILATION. (or however you spell that word.)  The only thing that we are still concerned about (assuming the neighbours are good sports and just let David fix it; it really is very very minimal damage) is that we have no idea how/why that limb came down.  I mean, I really do think it must have been The Ivy because we have had no wind, no bad storms etc.  So the only other option is that the tree is just rotten which would be terrible because there is even more of this tree hanging right over our house.  And it’s even bigger.  So let’s pray that The Ivy doesn’t go all out and bring it all down because then I might admit defeat and move out!  Stay tuned!