The Christmas Miracle

Hairy-stemmed poison ivy grew all over the garage's northern wall and wasn't visible until the foliage was gone. Ivy overgrowing a structure not only crawls all over it, but pulls with incredible strength. It can pull whole trees down or part the stones in a stone wall. It was gathering under the garage roof in a conspiracy. The ivy had to go. And nobody else was gonna cut it down, so it was on me.

Trouble was, I could barely move or think, being so burnt out from work it was too much effort to raise my arms overhead, much less pick up a cutting tool. Was limping around. Couldn't stay standing for long. Couldn't think of words, either. I had healing to do, but how? Stupid woo-woo advice from the Internet said sleep, meditation, yoga, little or no Internet (the net generates decision fatigue), and replace the Internet with books.

Okay, then: waking shockingly late, exhausted on waking, feeling corny every minute of the yoga DVD and meditation app, working as much as able (about 1/4 the normal), drinking coffee (it didn't help), and the rest of the time reading, starting with McCullough's hefty Harry Truman biography. Sprinkle in a few meetings or meals with friends and four days of cat-sitting. Three weeks and this morning I get out of bed saying, "This is the day I tape down that one carpet" and even before morning coffee it was done, and I still had energy. With temperatures in the high 50s I dressed in long sleeves and long pants and gloves, and bushwhacked behind the garage (all overgrown) to the ivy-covered garage wall and started severing the vines.

Took about an hour. It was a miracle: I still had energy. Severed some honeysuckle vines along the lane. Still had some energy. Shampooed and showered in case any poison ivy touched me. While on the bedroom floor putting on sneakers I saw some spaces all dusty and cobwebby. Dragged out the vacuum and vacuumed them up. Then -- then! -- I still had enough energy to cook a baked potato and an egg in butter. And eat them! And then write this post!

It's a miracle! Merry Christmas, happy holidays, blessed solstice.

So Long, Suckers

I  could have a vine-covered cottage, but there's plants enough around here, and invasive vines shouldn't receive encouragement, so I set about pulling down the several vines growing roofward on the south-facing wall. I don't know what they are, but they have the neatest little feet--suckers--they use to climb the wall and hold on. They cling so tightly that when ripped from the siding it sounds like Velcro, and they take the paint off. For good measure I tore the roots out when I could and cut them when I couldn't.

Who cut the hearts into the cottage's nonfunctional shutters I don't know, but at different times they please me and other times make me ill. I used to know, way back when, an old man, German immigrant, a former Nazi Youth. He had heart cutouts in his shutters just like this. He apologized to me for the Nazis who imprisoned my dad for four years. He didn't know any better, he said, back then. I believe him. I'm seeing how politics can sweep people up. But now I have difficulties loving the heart cutouts and often don't even see them.

Underground Cable

This week's work, hating and subverting Japanese-honeysuckle vines, invasives with woody runners as thick as your wrist, that snake out of the earth and twine their way up trees, strangling them. To complete the kill, they load the treetop with so much vine that the trees topple. This vine is dead, but it only shows you how the thing wants to squeeze the jesus out of everything in its path.

Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) is most evident in winter, and I sever as many "cables" as I can, finding them so grossly offensive I feel driven to cut them even knowing the cut end will sprout five more tentacles. Easy to I.D. the living vines because their leaves, dammit, are evergreen. In some areas the vines droop from branches practically forming curtains. There are only two ways to kill it dead: a springtime controlled burn, or cutting and painting the root end with Roundup herbicide. Obviously those are jobs for pros and I can't do it throughout my hundred Divine acres. If I had a magic lamp one of my three wishes would be: No invasive species!! This plant is of the Devil.

Alas, it is said that the entity that introduced it to the state was the MDC as ground cover for home gardens. It escaped and is ripping down rows of trees everywhere I look. Positively grievous. Picture taken on the Timberstone trail.