Poison Invasion

The mother vine!  Jeff couldn't believe it had its own branches!

The "original" vine from the beginning of the world!

Another shot of the mother vine.

Well, I don't really have anything new to report on the adoption front, but I thought that it was time for an update on other things!  Our camping trip that I wrote of in my last post was literally a washout so nothing to tell there.  The most spectacular thing going on right now is our battle to stop the invasion of the killer poison ivy.  It has earned that name because I HATE it.  I had ran into a patch of it last year while I was picking gooseberries which grow wild and abundantly in the woods surrounding our house.  I was so immersed in picking that I don't even know where it was that I got it.  Now, that I know that we have some on our property I am a little more wary and try to keep my eye out for it.  Well, as it turns out it is nearing gooseberry time again and I have been keeping a close eye on some of my closer plants so I know when I should start picking them.  Being that they are in the woods and the woods have ticks (another evil of nature!) I decided that I would cut some paths near some of the plants that are on the edge of the woods so I could keep a close eye on them without having to spray with deep woods off everytime.  So I begin to mow and as I am mowing an area I look around and notice pretty green leaves of three.  At first I thought oh they are just some other kind of brush plant, but then I realized they were getting bigger and looked nothing like the plant I thought they were.  I ran in the house and got on the internet, to double check my suspicions and correct I was!  Not only was there a little poison ivy, but it was rapidly taking over, then I noticed a vine that I had never really looked at climbing a tree in our yard and realized it was the mother of all poison ivy.  Thankfully, I have not gotten the oils on my skin, but I did take some precautionary measures and ran in the house and washed any exposed skin off with my Bert's Bees Poison Ivy soap, I wasn't taking any chances!  We have since bought Roundup poison ivy killer and Jeff went on the offensive, killing (hopefully) the ivy we had found, unfortunately as we became further enmeshed in our offensive we found more and more!  If I had found the mother of all poison ivy vines, today we discovered the original poison ivy vine that God put here during creation!  Jeff didn't even think that it was poison ivy at first, stating, "it has no branches, I don't think it is poison ivy."  The problem was he didn't look high enough up the tree!  Normally I would just let nature be, but with a dog that runs in the woods indiscriminately and I being allergic to it, poison ivy MUST go!