Attacked a savage batch of ivy consuming one of our only trees in the backyard. To the tune of our neighbor’s wailing Chihuahuas, Josh and I donned gloves and impractical shoes as we began, what we thought, to be a mild outdoor project. Vintage beer cans were found hidden in its innards; the ivy had begun to break apart our wooden fence. It consumed an ancient piece of wire, a retired compost pile, and most of the tree trunk. We look at this patch by our alleyway every day when we pull in and out of our parking pad. Watching the slow demise of the tree and the fence nearby was becoming too painful. Josh and I attacked it with vigor, taking out all our aggressions on pulling the vines off the bark and freeing the tree from its captor. We filled bin after bin with ivy, hacking at the big pieces with clippers and destroying the ivy down to the root. Ivy is really like an enormous weed, consuming and healthy yet devilish and manipulative.

This is the first time I’ve really felt like my gardening was worth something. The last place we lived in I took pride in pulling the weeds, mowing occasionally, and “dead-heading” the rodies. Looking at the sorry shape our old place is in now with its current owners I realize we actually did a fair amount…well versus doing nothing I suppose.
I planted bulbs a few weeks ago, and a few of them are actually sprouting up through the poor soil I planted them in. I bought two more bags of bulbs on sale at Home Depot over the weekend in addition to a bag of organic, composted, soil. I bought a tomato sprout at the Farmer’s Market and dumped it into the same old cracked pot I used last year. I watched the ineffectual nature of weed and feed on our infested grass.  Our yard seems so big and yet I know it’s really not…there’s just so much we want to do.