Vines, vines, everywhere a vine...

I always start projects at the weirdest times. It's not like I don't have other things to do or other projects that need to be finished before a new one starts. But yesterday, I made the mistake of pulling on a vine in the back yard. Which started a marathon of vine-pulling and bush whacking yesterday morning and continued through to this afternoon.

Of course there are no "before" pictures. I'm usually deep into it before it occurs to me to take pictures...

This is the area that started it all. Just to the right of that blue can is the gate to the back yard. It was overhung with gardenia branches on the left and vines on the right. I only wanted to be able to use the gate without getting hung up on foilage!

See all those vines? I pulled one and got a whole wad of stuff coming off. That started the ball rolling.

As it turns out, the only green on that side of the yard was vines! They'd managed to choke and kill all the azalea bushes that lined that fence. So in addition to pulling vines, I pulled out dead bushes. I did find some kind of tree. I'm not sure what it is, but it's small and kind of wimpy looking. I trimmed it up a bit. Hopefully now that it's not covered in vines and is kind of balanced, it will be able to grow.

I got a lot done. The fence is barely standing up. The vines were doing their best to pull that down too. It's a chicken wire fence, being held up by rotting posts that are barely standing themselves. I'll need to dig some holes and plant new posts. The chicken wire itself is still in pretty good shape. In that last picture, you can see some kind of tree on the left side. That was covered in so many suckers that it was looking more like a bush than a tree. I trimmed it up and it looks beautiful now!

I got most of the branches and vines cleaned up before the rains came. Still have a little pick up to do tomorrow.

And I think that the poison ivy vines I pulled out didn't do much damage to me. I was wearing gloves, but I also showered with tec-nu and put on some Cala-Gel and it's not looking bad.