Monday, July 03, 2017 – Land & Records Poison Ivy, Visitor’s Center Liriope Beds

This morning we went back to work at the Land & Records office. We didn’t finish last Friday and there was a lot left to do today. Especially in the back parking lot where there is a hedge all the way around. There were lots of weeds that needed to be pulled but the biggest problem was the Poison Ivy.

There were three areas in the hedge row that were completely full of Poison Ivy. While the others pulled weeds I set about pulling Poison Ivy safely. I wore disposable rubber gloves but it was very difficult to get my hands on the stems of the Poison Ivy and not have the leave brush up against my exposed skin between my sleeve and the rubber glove.  It took me a while to come up with a plan but I struck on a unique solution to my problem.

I put grocery bags over my hands and a rubber band to hold the bag high on my arms. My hands were double protected and the grocery bag protected me up to the middle of my forearm. I know I probably looked funny but I didn’t get stung by Poison Ivy once. 

There was a ton of Poison Ivy; I’ve never had to clean up a patch so big before. By the time we finally finished at the Land & Records Office about a third of our trailer was full of Poison Ivy.

 

We finished our work day pulling weeds in the Liriope beds at the Visitor’s Center. There are lots of weeds in each Liriope bed but once again, the hard part was all of the Poison Ivy we found. One of our interns, Emilie Roper got stung by some Poison Ivy while pulling harmless weeds and didn’t notice a hidden Poison Ivy. I split my time between killing Poison Ivy and poisoning rogue trees. We had another full, hard and hot day of work