Operation Ivy
I've just had an extraordinarily productive couple of days. Productive in a destructive kind of way. I am become death, destroyer of worlds!
You see, I had ivy on the left-hand wall of my backyard. A lot of ivy. An awful lot. Oh, it was glorious! It went up three storeys high. This is the 'before' shot:
But, you see, therein lay the problem. The wall in question belongs to the neighbours' house, not mine; and the top of the ivy was beginning to lap at the edge of their roof:
Just a couple of inches' more growth -- which would take no time at all, as soon as the season arrives -- and it would have started to interfere with their roof surface; and I would have been liable for the damage. Something needed to be done. And so I got out my ladder, my secateurs and my saw. Trouble is, even extended to its limit, my ladder is still only about eight feet tall, and that just wasn't going to be enough. So I did what any sensible person would do, and stood it on my bench:
With that, I was then able to get fairly high. I didn't actually realise quite how high, until I saw the following photograph. Note the top of the ladder, and then note just how far above that I was somehow managing to reach:
But, oh, you should have seen me! I was like a cross between Tarzan, Spiderman and Harold Lloyd! There were times when I was clinging to a bough with both hands, eyes closed (so as not to get bits in them), and both feet dangling in the air, trying to use my entire bodyweight to pull down the very bough to which I was clinging. "Um, are you really sure that's wise? What happens when the bough breaks? Did nursery rhymes teach you nothing?!" Oh, don't be such a fusspot, I know what I'm doing!
And so this is the 'after' shot:
I simply couldn't reach the little exclave at the top: but I really don't think it's going to be grafting itself back together with the more vital portion any time soon. It can harmlessly just hang there in the sky, like Laputa or Bespin or something like that, and die at its leisure.
And so now all that I need to contend with are the fifty-one refuse sacks, full of ivy and birdnests -- three of the later, to be precise, albeit disused ones -- that are currently cluttering my yard. Well, forty-seven now: I have already made one trip to the bins. I sense that there'll be many more such trips to come.
You see, I had ivy on the left-hand wall of my backyard. A lot of ivy. An awful lot. Oh, it was glorious! It went up three storeys high. This is the 'before' shot:
But, you see, therein lay the problem. The wall in question belongs to the neighbours' house, not mine; and the top of the ivy was beginning to lap at the edge of their roof:
Just a couple of inches' more growth -- which would take no time at all, as soon as the season arrives -- and it would have started to interfere with their roof surface; and I would have been liable for the damage. Something needed to be done. And so I got out my ladder, my secateurs and my saw. Trouble is, even extended to its limit, my ladder is still only about eight feet tall, and that just wasn't going to be enough. So I did what any sensible person would do, and stood it on my bench:
With that, I was then able to get fairly high. I didn't actually realise quite how high, until I saw the following photograph. Note the top of the ladder, and then note just how far above that I was somehow managing to reach:
But, oh, you should have seen me! I was like a cross between Tarzan, Spiderman and Harold Lloyd! There were times when I was clinging to a bough with both hands, eyes closed (so as not to get bits in them), and both feet dangling in the air, trying to use my entire bodyweight to pull down the very bough to which I was clinging. "Um, are you really sure that's wise? What happens when the bough breaks? Did nursery rhymes teach you nothing?!" Oh, don't be such a fusspot, I know what I'm doing!
And so this is the 'after' shot:
I simply couldn't reach the little exclave at the top: but I really don't think it's going to be grafting itself back together with the more vital portion any time soon. It can harmlessly just hang there in the sky, like Laputa or Bespin or something like that, and die at its leisure.
And so now all that I need to contend with are the fifty-one refuse sacks, full of ivy and birdnests -- three of the later, to be precise, albeit disused ones -- that are currently cluttering my yard. Well, forty-seven now: I have already made one trip to the bins. I sense that there'll be many more such trips to come.