House & Garden   

Never declare victory until the war is won; the final battle, over. I've been fighting a personal battle with the poison ivy in my backyard for the last 5 years, almost as long as the war on terrorism. Much like that war, I had no idea I was in the war for the first few years. I was losing battles I had no idea I was engaged in. I'd go to work after a weekend of gardening and barbequing in my backyard, and by Tuesday I'd feel tired and beaten, like I had gotten very old all of a sudden. My face was red and warm. I felt hot and itchy and tired.

I figured it was the sun and the smoke of the barbeque. It was that but what it mainly was, was the poison. The poison that caused the low-grade fever and then the rash -- all over my arm or above the eyes. Poison Ivy.

There are lots of misconceptions about poison ivy that you can clear up by doing a quick internet search. For example, it's not called poison ivy because the rash seems to crawl up different parts of your body like an ivy vine -- it just takes two days generally for your skin to react to the poisonous oil that you get from brushing against the ivy. If you get it on your hands and then itch your ass, you'll have a poison ivy reaction on your ass. (Luckily I've never had a poison ivy reaction on my ass.)

Gate to Lou's backyard. So pretty. Where's the poison ivy? (look below for answer)

Where's the poison ivy? -- Click on picture to find.

Or not, because the odd thing about poison ivy is that your resistance to it decreases the more you come in contact with it. So if you felt fearless as a youngster -- able to truffle through forests with nary a case, and now as an adult you constantly seem to be coming down with a rash after similar jaunts, you know the reason why. It's also been said that global warming will cause an increase in poison ivy, as warmer temperatures provide a hot bed for it. I read that in a sidebar to a news story two years ago -- major effects of global warming: melting of ice caps, rise in sea levels, destruction of major low-lying cities inhabited by millions of people, increase in killer diseases, destruction of farm lands and crops through drought, and an increase in poison ivy. It appeared to me the author of that article was perhaps in the midst of his own personal war with poison ivy.

I knew I had poison ivy in my yard, I just didn't know where. I looked up pictures of it on the internet, printed out color copies and then went hunting about comparing every leaf structure to the pictures. But damn if 50 percent of the leaf types in my backyard were triangular and pointy, and come in groups of three. None of it looked like ivy though. I read that it turns red in the fall. I waited 'til the fall. Everything turned red. I read that you can buy Poison Ivy spray to kill it.

Poison Ivy Is Relentless

And it kept coming after me, beating me up in battles; it was relentless and it wasn't going away. Then my one-year-old son came down with a bad case of it, that the pediatrician swore wasn't poison ivy (what the heck does he know? How many kids come in with poison ivy rashes?). I went back to the internet and did a precise examination of poison ivy pictures and the written descriptions that accompanied them. Equipped with the clearest and most definitive pictures I could find, I went back to my backyard, determined to find it.

And I found it. It was simply ALL OVER THE FENCE on the left side of the property, including the gate that led one into the backyard! The leaves were bigger than I thought they'd be -- that's what caused me to overlook it initially.

Poison ivy is a big broad shiny pointy leaf, with three leaves to a stem, that grows off a fury vine. The ivy can disguise itself as leaves to a great big bush -- as mine was doing -- it will grow over the bush and have its leaves cover, obfuscate, and impersonate the bush's leaves.

There's the poison ivy -- EVERYWHERE
(click to enlarge)

LouV is well padded and covered, and surrounded by poison ivy. The ivy got to him at the seams between gloves and shirt.

And the bloody battles began. The poison ivy struck back at every turn. It would find the separation between my long sleeved shirt and rubber gloves and get me there. Two days after every weekend battle came the tiredness, the low-grade fever, the itch above the eyes, the feeling of being an old man, even though I had made sure not to brush against it nor rub my eyes. Even being in close proximity to the ivy will cause an outbreak. On the internet you'll find that many people who have been struck by poison ivy to the point of being hospitalized, refuse to go into their backyards anymore.

But for each battle, the poison ivy felt the pain -- first it lost all of its leaves, torn down, horded into 20 or so large 10 gallon hefty bags. Then its vine, ripped up piece by piece off the fence. It hung on with its filament fibers clutching onto the wood it had embedding itself into. The filaments were left for a cleanup battle later on. Even the bushes and small trees that the ivy had inundated were completely removed -- dug up from the roots.

The final battles focused on completely eradicating the poison ivy roots -- first the major arteries, pulled from the ground. Later, the thin fibers of roots that infest the ground in the 15 foot by 3 foot area where the poison ivy grew were meticulously removed.

Section of backyard fence before the war. Lou used to comment that the leaves on this big bush looked so pretty. It was actually poison ivy that had grown over a bush, trees and the fence. (Click to enlarge.)

Same section of backyard fence after numerous battles. Notice the furry tentacles of the poison ivy left on the fence. This still needed to be scraped off with paint scraper, after allowing several weeks to dry out. (Click to enlarge.)