Saturday, August 01, 2015

The vine is gone.

The apartment complex next to my house has this pervasive vine growing in the corner right by my house.  I made the mistake of letting it get a foothold in that corner of my yard.

So today the temperature got up into the mid 90’s, Fahrenheit.  But I decided it was the day to get rid of that vine.  I got tired of cutting it back from choking my tree, and I wanted to reclaim that part of my property.

The thing had (and to a lesser extent still does) roots everywhere.  I had to use my electric hedge trimmer to chop it up enough to get most of it out.  That meant chopping back and forth, and crisscross about an inch into the dirt.  Fortunately, the hedge trimmer did well, there weren’t many roots too big for it to handle.

Chop, yank, rake.  Chop, yank, rake.  What I pulled out of that area almost fills up my truck-bed trailer, and that doesn’t include already filling up the yard-waste bin.

Grueling work, but I got it back behind the fence.  I sprayed all the roots left with vegetation killer, now I just have to spray by the fence every month or so to keep it from coming back over.  I’ve used Round-Up to keep it from growing up the walls of my house (it still controls the side yard), so I know it really doesn’t like vegetation killer.

Anyway, now I have to figure out what to do with that part of the yard.

2 comments:

Lisa Shafer said...

If you'd called it "recapture the front yard" and ridden an ATV, perhaps the governor would have funded your endeavor. :)
I'm impressed. I have a vine in my yard that has mutilated my fence, but it would kill my back to get rid of it and my lawn guy refuses to tackle it, so it's to the point where the ivy be named Audrey II as it takes over the world.

21 Wits said...

I have a lot of those vines as well around here, they are a hearty beast. You did find work there, hard but rewarding and you have a new area to design something. Or not. Perhaps a bonfire pit in the center? I wonder if anyone from the apartment building will notice your hard work?