Pesky Weed

Gmail has been having fun with my inbox recently.  There have been days when very few emails have come through and then others when they just keep arriving.  So I have been catching up on my blog/post reading today.  By the way, if I don’t seem to have commented on your posts for a while, please check your SPAM folder.  One of the blogs I follow is Crowing Crone Joss and when I read this post from her today about the Borg Vine, I immediately thought of my pesky weed, the ivy.

Somebody, in their wisdom planted ivy around this house many years ago and it has now reached epic proportions.  It climbs up the side of the house and threatens to enter the bathroom and study widows.

Ivy encroaching over bathroom window

Ivy at study window

At the rear of the property is a high bank.  A flight of brick steps gives access to a sitting area and here the ivy is rampant!

Ivy at sitting area

Some months ago I  had a contractor come to kill the ivy but to no avail.  I think he liked the ivy and wasn’t sufficiently ruthless.  So now we are taking really drastic measures.

More ivy

As you will see the “branches” of the weed are really quite thick, so we will cut as much of it back and then douse the cut ends of the branches with undiluted woody weed killer.  As soon as we have a forecast for a couple of dry days this will be done.  And then once again we will be in control.

But while writing this blog I have thought about how tenacious this ivy is.  In the face of several  many onslaughts (and those that I have mounted cannot possibly be the only ones over all the years since it was first planted) it has survived.  I then thought about the tenacious people I have met over many years.  They are like this ivy.  They are determined to hang on and thrive and they do.  I have met many people like this in real life, and many more in the blogosphere.  A few days ago I wrote about being in awe of the things that many people have suffered and overcome.  Some people have had ghastly childhoods; some were unwanted by their mother’s second husband and treated very badly; others have lived with alcoholic and violent fathers or mothers, and some have become involved with the wrong people,  but what they have in common is they are survivors.  In my years practising as a Life Coach I met many people whose problem boiled down to lack of self-esteem and often they had often been brought to this state by the way they had been treated.  With time and tenacity on their part, most were able to rediscover their self-esteem, and some keep in touch so that I know how well they are surviving and succeeding.

“Even in its darkest passages, the heart is unconquerable.
It is important that the body survives,
but it is more meaningful that the human spirit prevails.”
Dave Pelzer,  1960 – author of A Child Called “It”

So again to all those who have survived and moved on in their lives I say congratulations and well done and whatever happiness and success you now enjoy you most certainly have deserved it.

But unfortunately for my ivy, it will not succeed. I shall be keeping a close watch on the weather forecast and as soon as two dry days are forecast there shall be War on the Weed!!

Associated Posts

• How Lucky Am I
• My September Years

Related articles

• Could Lasers Be the New Way to Kill Weeds? (inhabitat.com)
• Star Wars on Weeds: Could Lasers Replace Herbicides? (treehugger.com)