In Which A Kid'll Eat Ivy Too-- Wouldn't You?

This morning David, Connor and I all piled in the car, leaving Jer finishing up his breakfast, and after stopping to drop Connor off at school we drove to the new house to start work. There we spent the next two and a half hours weeding. We almost finished the sidewalk in front of the house.

There are a lot of weeds.

And not just any weeds. There are dandelions the size of my head-- the kind with the super spiky leaves so there's no possible way to get at them without leaving sizable holes in your palms. There are vines that have tangled themselves up in the bushes and while you start off thinking that you are going to be pulling up eight separate plants they turn out to be one giant plant with a network of roots running eight feet in all directions. There are blackberry bushes with stems thicker than my thumb in some of the areas we haven't gotten to yet.

And then there's the ivy.

The ivy bed is somewhere between 50 and 60 feet long, and it's about eight feet wide. Trust me when I say that pictures do not do it justice. It's three feet deep in some places-- a network of woody stems that have totally choked off everything else except for the aforementioned blackberry monsters and some particularly hardy salal. And once we finish the backyard, and the rest of the front yard, this ivy will become my personal hell for the next two weeks.

David is suggesting we use a machete. Jer wants to use a blowtorch or a chainsaw. Connor doesn't seem to have an opinion on the ivy-- he's much more interested in the cars driving by.

I think we need a goat.

I mean, think about it. Goats eat both English Ivy and blackberries. We could just stake him out in the middle of the hill and let him go to town! And while a diet strictly of ivy probably wouldn't be terribly good for him, if he gets bored with it we could sic him on the grass growing out of the lava rock by the curb. When he's not eating the ivy, he could pull Connor's wheelchair around for me like a little chariot. And if anyone objects to him, we could just drop him off at their house at night and he could eat their prize rose bushes. You know, a drive-by-goating!

Though once we ran out of ivy I don't know what he'd eat. The cats, probably. Or possibly the house. Also their eyes kind of freak me out. So now that I think about it maybe a goat isn't a good idea.

Guess I'm stuck with the clippers.

~Jess