The Power of Prednisone

I had a really long post about what I did over the weekend, but the Blogger app for my phone is old and ate it. I have to remove it from my phone and just post from the laptop.

Poison ivy has landed me on a 10 day course of Prednisone.
I used that to my advantage over the weekend, tearing out as much of the infernal stuff as I could get my hands on, dipping the stumps in RoundUp. These drugs make my brain feel like a sack full of ferrets on speed. I have to power of 10 men! And complete inability to concentrate on anything for more than 5 minutes! Pin balling my way around the yard was probably the most productive thing I could do with myself.
I cleaned out as much of the front hillside as I could. I then moved on to the area between the road and the wall, which is a solid woven vine mat of poison ivy and bittersweet.
I'm of a few thoughts on this - a) Cover it with black plastic and a ton of mulch and smother it to death which will take years, and might now work completely, b) Quickly, while still drugged, rip the rest out, (tick tock, 7 more days of drugs!) or c) Pay someone else to deal with it, (but, $.)
I'm really hesitant to accept help dealing with it, because I really, really don't want anyone to ride the Prednisone roller coaster because of my yard. But the stuff is everywhere. All the beds, and even woven into the under layer of the grass in the yard.
I have to do some hard thinking about that.

I got poison ivy pulled Saturday, and Sunday, I vigorously raked about 80% of the yard and got 120 lbs of lime put down in the raked spots.
FYI - if you have the choice, don't get the cheapest spreader. I borrowed Ian's, (which to be fair, he'd gotten to apply grass seed, which is a lot lighter than lime.) His spreader was made mostly of plastic parts, and I spent a lot of time fighting with it. Who makes a drive shaft and universal joint out of plastic? (Agway does.)
In the end, I wound up spreading about 2/3 by hand, using the spreader as a tiny wheelbarrow.

*Warning - snake pictures ahead*

I figured out where my littlest neighbors live - in a small hole by an old ground pipe to the south of the house. They are super curious, and not at all aggressive. I've named them Sampson and Delilah. They are a subspecies of Garter snake, called Ribbon snakes. Non-venomous - they like to eat frogs and spiders. That's cool. Long as they don't decide to move in.

Sampson - He's smaller and more yellow than Delilah.
He likes to just watch me from his little hole.
Now that we are aware of each other, we're ok.

I also discovered that there's a great fat woodchuck moved into a burrow on the west side of the house, just past the treeline. Little bugger is fearless. Not sure what I'm going to do about that, because personal space must be maintained with a rodent of that size.

So far, this is the first bloom that came with the property. I think there's a bunch of other things in the lawn and the treeline that are trying. Sending up a lot of green - I'm thinking about hitting the areas with some BulbTone.
Time will show me what's where.
Other than Poison Ivy.
I know where that is.

Tiny crocus!