Vines

I decided to take on a minor home outside project on Tuesday, and I think I actually succeeded, without incident. If you have read past posts, then you know my last outside project lead in a broken lawn mower. While the boys, "Two" and "Other Two" were at their weekly scout meeting, I decided to remove the vines crawling up the side of my building over my garage. The vines were all over the side of the garage, and over top of the garage door in front. I don't know what type of vines they are, since I am not a herbologist, botanist, or whatever "ist" that knows about plants and vines. I do know the following: The vines aren't poison ivy, they are smelly, dirty, and look nasty on the side of my building. So I went to the bottom of the wall, and found where the ivy grows from the ground, applied my pruning shears, and snipped. Then it was a simple (relatively actually) matter of pulling the vine off the wall. The hard part was getting the vine off the top third of the wall as I am only 5' 7", and the wall is about 12'. This is where I should have gone into the garage, pulled out my step ladder and completed the job, BUT... Being a relatively new home-owner, I don't have a step ladder yet. However, I do have a small step stool that I use inside. With that, and a metal rake, I was able to get most of the ivy completely off the wall. The job is done, except I now have a pile of vines drying in front of my garage door. I was supposed to clean the vine remains up Wednesday night, but I visited "Sweetie" instead... That's another story.

Now if I could only figure out how to get the remaining scraps of old, dry, clingy vines off the rest of the wall, I would be very happy. I also have to keep an eye on it and trim it back if it attempts to sprout up again.