Thursday, August 03, 2006

Glass and poison ivory

Way out in my backyard, at the border with the lady that lives behind, there is a lot of glass in the ground. I'm sure it has been there for decades. With soil erosion this glass surfaces. I asked her about it and she said that her parents used to have a house on that property before building her current house and that there was never any garbage pickup, so they dumped "stuff" at various places on the property. Well, I can understand that, but technically it is on MY property. So, whenever I can I go out with a trowel, whisk broom, and bucket and get whatever is easy. Usually I only spend a few minutes here and there. Last week I found a rather nice, intact milk bottle. I cleaned it off and will give it to a neighbor who has wanted one but complained he could only find them at flea markets and didn't want to pay. When held just right I can read some lettering on it that may have been silk screened or bled through a label. Google hasn't turned up anything about the particular dairy, so I am at a loss to determine how long that bottle has been in the ground.

While talking to the lady I pointed out one of my trees that was covered in lush green foliage. I asked her to please stay away from it and keep her grandkids away from it because it is all poison ivy. The vine at the base is as thick as an elephant's leg. As we were talking she kept saying "poison ivory"...what a hick! The poison "ivory" was hanging down almost to the ground so I sprayed it with herbicide, and after a lot of the lower stuff withered I cut that away and hauled it off. That should discourage little kids. Also I can get in there easier with the lawnmower now to keep everything cut real low. In the fall after all the foliage falls off I am going to cut the vine.

3 Comments:

At 11:00 AM, August 04, 2006, Blogger EZ Travel said...

A botanist friend of ours told us a few years back that we had poison "ivory" on our front slope. Since Jackson wasn't even a blip on the radar we just joked that we would not be rolling down the hill naked anytime soon. But now that we have someone in the house that would LOVE to roll down the hill naked we should get it taken care of. Thanks for the reminder.

As for the glass, it seems like you could make some sort of craft project out of it. If you can get a bunch of different colors JP could make a mosiac table top.

 
At 2:45 PM, August 04, 2006, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I had no idea that Poison ivy would grow that large. How high does it go up the tree? I have some vines that go up about twenty-five feet and their vines at ground level are about 1/2" thick.

 
At 6:24 PM, August 04, 2006, Blogger Tim B. said...

I think 25 feet is a pretty good estimate. Perhaps 30. It is ALL the way up the trunk of the tree. The top of that tree broke off years ago so it is not as tall as it COULD be. I can get an accurate measure when I cut it down.

 

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