As promised...

[rivka]

...pictures of our ivy disaster.

Looking along the length of the disaster. I think this picture actually understates the mess, but it's the best we have:


A couple of side views showing how far the ivy extended from the wall, and with our trash barrel providing scale:




These dark glossy leaves belong to one of our magnolia trees, buried in ivy:


Where the ivy should have been:


A Gothic close-up, in case the full horror has yet to strike you:

Comments

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

When my folks bought their house the hill behind it (a very steep slope, wooded in pine) was, in the near distance (from the four foot retaining wall back about six feet, and about fifty feet wide) covered in a type of cape weed (iceplant).

I removed it. I came to loathe it. Like the ivy the undergrowth gets, "dead" and becomes a wiry, sinewy, tough mat, which refuses to come up easily.

It was how I learnt to wield a small machete. Took about a month to get it out (after school). The sap is sort of irritant caustic too.

That ivy looks just as bad.

TK

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Ah, now iceplant I have a permanent fondness for. Iceplant saved my mother's house from burning down in the brushfires of '88.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm glad your mother's house didn't burn down. But if you live in California, iceplant (http://www.nps.gov/redw/iceplant.htm) is an invasive exotic that spreads widely & destroys local ecosystems (http://www.lakemerced.org/NativePlants/TheMesa/mesa.html). If at all possible, it's good to try & plant native (http://www.sbbg.org/sections/visitor_info/visitor_info_level_3/visitor_info_level_4/alternatives.html) or less invasive (http://www.sccgov.org/scc/assets/docs/387434brochure.final2.pdf) species with similar features instead. (http://watershed.csumb.edu/ron/ron_pdf/Invasive_Plants.pdf)

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Ah. It doesn't appear to be nearly as pervasive in non-sand areas, IME (but I am not a horticulturalist by any means).

I don't know that any of the alternatives of the "dune" sort would grow in the very clayey soil where my mother is.