PI-4 (finally, with pictures)

got the photos off Andrea's camera last night. they aren't "all that", but it will give you an idea.

recapping:
2 pecan trees with respective poisonous vines. the first one i chopped up around Christmas time with a borrowed axe and ended up infecting my eyes, face and neck. here is what that vine looks like now. i wanted to include the ground in the first one for scale purposes:



this one shows how it forks off and what not:




the death tree i worked on a week and a half ago, which ended up infecting both my arms, neck, hands, etc., is here:




look at that! i've never seen such a disgusting display of poison ivy anywhere else, ever. that's insane. most of them were small enough to chop with lopppers, but the big tangle in the middle required chopping with a hatchet. that's what got me this time around.

i mentioned how there are branches coming off the vines several feet with giant leaves and flower clusters. check it out:



all the wilting leaves in the foreground are what i'm talking about. this was the day after, so they were already starting to die (YES!!). the branches are roughly 71/2 feet off the ground and between 5 and 8 feet in length.

here's another one where you can sort of make out the flowers. they're beautiful. to bad they're all dying, Andrea and i could've used them for our wedding:




sorry they're all so dark. the sun was setting and i wanted to get this documented before the leaves die and fall off. although, the wind storm i told you about caused a large number of leaves to fall off, which i had to rake up to keep Krust from tramping all over. here is the pile, with my shoe included for scale:



that's all i have, except for this one Andrea took on my way out to do the chopping with Kari's hatchet and machete. the only reason i include it is to point out the only place i was exposed (arms) are the only places i got it. imagine that! also, i like the look the dog is giving the camera.






i just viewed the post and noticed when you click on the pics, they get huge, which is good and bad, i suppose. i'm leaving them as is b/c you really need to zoom in to see what i'm talking about. and in looking at the dorky picture of me with the hatchet, i saw in the background something else: the tree in the background and all the poison vines it had sent out in all directions that i pulled up on Sunday:



i had to get those up before i mowed, lest i contaminate Jessica's mower to the point it would have to be condemned. plus, the ground would have been covered in poison juice, rendering it unusable. a superfund site, practically. all the vines you see on the ground were traced back to the trunk of the pecan tree. there's not much left to do but douse the severed trunks with Ortho poison ivy killer which we purchased from Home Depot recently. that will be fun, except now i'm scared of the giant red ants that live back there, too. can't win for losin'.

again, this was a hasty post and not my best work. not much worse than my best, but still: not my best. if you want to read quality, check out Dean or Andrea's blogs. if you want crap, keep checking back here.