Saturday's work

©2015 Lydia Hinshaw

Weed, turned tree, turned trash

 ORMOND BEACH, FL -- Weeds can get out of control here, with our eternal growing season, abetted by our five-month absence every summer.

 There's a nearly indestructible weed that, if neglected, can turn into a tree, and an ugly one at that.  I don't know whether it has a name.  I cut off little ones as soon as I spot them poking up through the ferns that cover most of the yard.  Then I cut off the multiple shoots that soon appear from the spot where I cut it off. I keep cutting until it finally gives up.

 Forget pulling it out by the roots, unless you're Goliath.

 Anyhow, a few years ago I missed one somehow.  It was camouflaged against the wall of bamboo along the property line.

 It had grown to 30-feet or so, with a trunk six inches in diameter.  It was threatening to team with several varieties of vines to strangle either the electric service, or the slim cable that delivers the Internet to the house.  This would mean calling an expensive professional to deal with the problem.

 Fortunately, the weed is deciduous, and is bare during our annual 10 days of winter, which ended a couple of weeks ago. It had just started to put out tiny green leaves. It was time to do something before it got too leafy, the weather got too hot, or we got too old.

 Prince Charming and I gathered our weapons:  A stepladder, two chainsaws, two sets of lopping shears. Gloves for both of us.  Ear plugs for me.

 I don't feel very confident on ladders anymore, until I see the Prince on a ladder, which is terrifying.  Pretty soon it was me up on the ladder, manipulating a chainsaw on a long pole, finding the proper angles to get rid of the uppermost branches.  Did I mention that the wood in this weed-tree is only slightly less strong that steel?  

 We got the thing down and we both survived, with a few scratches and one bump-on-the-head each (and a number of aches and pains tomorrow, I'm sure.)  Once it was on the ground, it was just a matter of chain-sawing the thicker pieces and lopping everything else into pieces four feet or less in length, which is the limit of what the city will haul off.

 I sprayed the stump with weed-killer, which was just a formality.  I'll be watching it daily and cutting back shoots as necessary until we leave in May.

 Even if it comes back this summer, it won't have time to reach the utility lines before we come home, which gives us one less thing to worry about.