Underfoot The Ground Is Patched With Climbing Arms Of Ivy Wrapped

You know how it is when you try to plant ivy to cover a wall...10 years go by and there are still plenty of bare patches. Those buildings on Harvard's campus are hundreds of years old. I suspect it wasn't always called the Ivy League. Green things take a long time to flourish. But it doesn't work that way here, sir.

In Nelson, things grow at a faster pace. Our dreaded ivy is called English Ivy and it is the bane of the country. It grows anywhere and everywhere. It grows as fast as bamboo. It will climb quicker than a monkey up walls and trees and attach itself with gripping tentacles that are near impossible to remove. It will destroy walls and kill vegetation through suffocation.

And we have a large retaining wall on our property with a stand of English Ivy that is very old and about 5 feet thick, 10 feet high and 75 feet long. It is aways climbing up and over the wall into the other gardens and wrapping it self around bushes and trees. It would even wrap me if I were to lie down. You take a nap on the lawn and you wake up in the middle of Gulliver's Travels.

We had a pro come over to chop it away, but it came back and needed another go.

Enter super gardener.

How hard could it be to hack away at the great wall of Ivy? The only tool I had was a hedge clippers. But the blades were sharp.I was able to do half the job in a few hours.

The result looked like I did when I tried to save a few bucks and cut my own hair with a sewing scissors.

Of course, it will all grow back in a few weeks, so neatness shouldn't count. But we have neighbors who are always walking up and down and checking out the various gardens. Kimberly has made the rest of the yard look so good that I couldn't let the front look like it was trimmed by a blind Samuri.

I needed a new tool with more power.

I have lived my entire life by one credo...never get hurt. I don't bungy jump or paraglide. My sport is golf, if it is indeed a "sport". I don't eat fish with small bones. No motorcycles. No wiring of light switches. The heaviest thing I will pick up is my own ass off the couch.

But today, I went down to Mitre 10 hardware and had a salesman talk me into an electric hedge trimmer. It has 600 amps, whatever they are. I was told this was a good amount to do the job. I also purchased a 25 meter length of extension cord.

This is an accident waiting to happen. How can I tackle this job without cutting through the cord and winding up as fried as Julius Rosenberg?

Kimberly won't let me start until I see a lawyer and update the will.

And now the rest of the story...... DAY 2

I did the remainder of the hedge with the machine. my neighbors, renters from Taiwan, were very happy because I chopped and cleaned their hedge also. They were kowtowing to me all over the place like I was the Dalai Lama. Jack, the man of the house, who works at a cucumber farm 6 days a week, helped me clean up the rubbish. Very friendly fellow.

So ask me if I had any mishaps. Ask me if I cut through the power cord.

Go ahead, ask. I won't be offended.

Sayonara