The Neverending Battle

As longtime readers may recall, this summer has been nearly consumed by my adventures in the great outdoors otherwise known as my newly acquired backyard. I've battled weeds and crabgrass and nurtured plants to life. Tonight, I'm hosting a production meeting for a show I'm working on next summer (a very organized director -- not me -- wants to get started asap), so I wanted to make sure my yard looked super good since I was having "strangers" over. My intention initially was to just go out and trim the bushes that line the south side of my property. Trimming these things is a constant chore. It seems like I barely get them clipped and there's more for me to go out and attack. And my neighbors who "share" these bushes with me never trim their side, so I either become the presumptuous neighbor who does THEIR lawn work in addition to my own or I have half-trimmed bushes. I opted for presumptuous neighbor.

Once I'd finished with the bushes, I decided to tackle the crap growing along the wire fence that lines the back half of the southern edge of my property -- also shared with the slacker neighbors next door. (Actually, they're very nice people. I just wish the people they hire to mow their lawn would pick up a set of freakin' hedge clippers every now and then!) There were some dead vines intertwined amongst the fencing that I wanted to get rid of since it looks so unsightly and also tackle the tremendous amount of growth in the back corner behind my shed.

As a result of this adventure, I've added a new enemy to my enemies list (I feel like Richard Nixon!) -- grapevine ivy. That stuff is insidious! It is mighty and really takes hold of whatever it can. I spent a good hour today battling this stuff -- both dead and alive. I made tremendous headway, although I did give up and left 2 clumps of it growing on the fence, conceding to the voices in my head that the ivy was more on the neighbors' side of the fence than mine and at some point it had to become their problem.

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm almost looking forward to winter!