So I just spent the last hour lugging a gallon of herbicide around spraying for poison ivy and Virginia creeper. The poison ivy is the main thing I want to kill off, because Jeremy's super sensitive to it. He currently has several spots on him. A few times it has spread so rampantly on him that he had to go get steroids from the doctor to get it under control. It's crazy. Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, I don't seem to be susceptible to it at all. Thus, my responsibility to rid ourselves of the poison ivy. You've heard of "leaves of three, let them be," right? Well, here's what you're looking for, in case you didn't know:
The leaves usually do look somewhat shiny due to their oily secretions, but these ones might look even more so as I'd already sprayed them.
Virginia creeper isn't really that big a deal except that it, well, creeps. All over the place. So, if left to its own devices, it would creep up my pine trees and probably kill them by shading them out (plants need sun to photosynthesize, of course). It apparently turns a lovely shade of red in the fall and, as such, is planted ornamentally, but I don't want it. It has leaves of five and is very prolific:
Fortunately, both of these seem to confine themselves to the slightly wooded areas of my yard - under a couple pine tree stands that we have. It narrows down where all I need to look. I've been spraying for weeks, now, but more and more keeps popping up. I'm hoping once it gets warmer and drier that I'll be able to kill it for the year. But it's definitely an annual ritual in which I must partake.
Just wanted to say, for Sunshine's sake, those would be compound leaves, so really
leaflets in 3 or 5, of course.
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