After an hour of pulling various and sundry weeds...

It seems I am legitimately allergic to yard work. 

Virginia Freaking Creeper

I live in a home with one of the most awesome yards ever. Here. Let me show you.

Playground:

Epic columns with grape vines. 

Picturesque benches that could use some weeding... And cleaning. 

Raspberry bushes.

See? Yard of awesome. 

There was just one problem. 

These are grapes:

They should be growing up the lattice all by themselves. 

But they made some unfortunate connections. 

These are NOT grapes:

Definitely not grapes:

And yet, "not grapes" and "definitely not grapes" we're climbing all over the lattice. The first picture is of Virginia creeper, one of the prettiest, most obnoxious climbing plants you will ever meet. A lot of people mistake it for poison ivy, since the leaves have a very similar shape, but count them - five. Poison ivy has three, so if you find this five-leafed variety, you can pull the heck out of it with no worries of a rash. You might, however, have to worry about the forces of darkness being furious with you for removing their climbing, flowerless dandelions. 

This weekend I noticed the beautiful leaves popping out all over the grape vines weren't, in fact, grape leaves. No, they were the five fingered hand of evil strangling the life out of our concords. 

See? Nearly every leaf you see there is Virginia Creeper. 

So, I decided I was going to clear everything that wasn't a grape off the grape vines. 

Begin: 

There should be NO green on that lattice. Nada. Zilch. The grape leaves don't start until much higher up. 

I started with the biggest vein of Virginia Creeper. After clearing some leaves I came to *badum psh!* the ROOT of the problem!!!

HAHAHAHAha...haha...ha...ha... um. Yeah. Anyway.

This root was at least an inch in diameter, and so deeply into the ground I'd need an auger to get it out. Since all I had was a little shovel I found in my land lady's garage and a kitchen knife I was very most definitely not supposed to be using as a saw, I opted for cutting it off as low as l could, and dumping salt on the remaining stump. 

Salty stump:

Chopped root end with salty stump in the background:

I removed what I could of the Virginia creeper without damaging the grapes, & cut the rest off from their roots so they could slowly die. 

Virginia creeper is brutal on lattice. 

Next I took to clearing out the "definitely not grapes," which I can't even begin to identify by their actual name. They were mostly growing on the ground and the lattice, not up into the actual grapes, and were filled with no shortage of panicked spiders running for their lives like tiny little demons. 

Then I made some friends. 

Then I started a collection of all my friends. 

An hour or two later, the not grapes and definitely not grapes were sorry to have ever infringed upon my yard. 

Today I went through and pulled down all the vines that were too attached to let go of the grapes. Yesterday I cut them all of, and today I removed their wilted, dying corpses.  

I present, grapes! And only grapes. 

And a happy snail that is now safely back among green plants. And off my kitchen saw. 

Dear Virginia creeper,

Go creep on someone else. 

I win. 

 

The Book of the Blog, Chapter One

1. Thou shalt not post selfies on Facebook every 12 minutes.

2. Thou shalt not swamp thy Facebook friends' newsfeeds with pictures of thy food. Only on Instagram shalt thou post thy victuals.

3. Thou shalt not swamp thy Facebook friends' newsfeeds every Saturday of the year with an hundred images of thy projects. 

4. Thou shalt not post an opinion about Obama, feminism, or gay rights on Facebook and expect thy newsfeed to be a place of peace and harmony. 

5. And it came to pass that Savannah was guilty - SO guilty - of violating the third commandment. On Facebook did all of her projects go, and her friends did groan and hide her from their newsfeeds. 

6. And so a photo blog she did create. And there she did keep a record of all her projects, and the adventures of her desk dinosaurs. 

7. And she did post a selfie.