Operation Ivy <^>

Before After

We live in a 40 year-old home with mature trees growing all around, therefore we have been blessed with lots of shade. Two of them are huge Ash trees with English ivy growing on them. Located in the front yard, they bring a stateliness to our home, I think. We have been noticing, over the past several months that our trees aren't doing too well. They seem to been dying, maybe they are, I mean they are at least 40 years old, and this is Texas (i.e. hot, dry, drought, ice-storms, heavy rains, etc.).

Here we are cutting the veins back from their strangle hold on our trees

Tuesday morning, Caleb & I were mowing, and edging the yard, and we got this bright idea that we should trim back the English Ivy that was growing up the W. tree. Out comes the ladder, loppers, and here came the leaves... of ivy.

Unwrapping the tree of its vines

After working for awhile on the one tree, we decided (and after consulting with Daddy) to pull down the ivy off of both trees. We left about 1'' of ivy at the base of the trees and all of it in the tree-boxes. Now, needless to say, our our trees look "naked" without all of their foilege

After

The job all in all, was very simple, very itchy (not like poison ivy), and very hot. But, we accomplished the task in about 1 hour. Thanks goes to Caleb and Phoebe who were my faithful co-laborers. : )

We still had piles of tree limbs (we also trimmed up the trees), ivy and other organic material awaiting disposal on the front lawn. Later that day, we cleaned it up. Now, it's being made into compost.

~Abby a.k.a. "the ivy puller"

A crack in time

P.S. Don't ever grow Ivy (of any kind) on your trees. It may look nice (if you keep it trimmed, it's a bit unruly) but it will kill your tree.