In the Weeds

 Saturday morning I spent two hours in the weeds.

About six weeks ago I noticed some leaves of three (let it be) with a tinge of red growing alongside our driveway. You may remember my brush with poison ivy five years ago. After a terrible bout of rash while in Charleston, SC, and a dose of steroids I came home, bought a full-body Tyvek suit, and was successful in eradicating the menace from my north yard.

This time I warned my teenaged assistant gardeners to stay out of the patch and bought another suit. I then spent six weeks vacillating between pulling the plants and spraying herbicide. Every few days it would rain, which postponed the project. In between there was a trip to Church history sites in Palmyra, NY,, with our Church youth group, a week of Girls’ Camp, and Joe Cannon’s funeral in Chicago.

Jim had suggested mowing the patch. I resisted. Mowing wouldn’t remove the roots and the stems close to the ground. The mower blades might send particles of poison into the air. I wanted to eradicate the plants, not just cut them back. (Jim later suggested my approach was irrational. I have to agree.)

The Thursday before, Jim had mowed our backyard again. Afterwards he told me he was tempted to mow the patch and pointed out that it was just getting worse as I delayed.

So, the next morning I donned the Tyvek and a pair of industrial-strength blue PVC gloves and marched out to face the task.

I saw to my horror that the ivy had spread and other woody weeds had overtaken the area. But undaunted I started at the far end, just east of a large maple tree, clipped the woody plants to the ground and pulled the ivy where I could, cutting it when necessary.

What had been little patches of ivy over a month ago had become a jungle of vines, five and ten and even fifteen feet long, partially hidden by the woody plants.

Eventually I considered giving up. I went inside: two hours had transpired. My project would take at least four more hours if I had the strength. I called Jim and asked him to come survey the scene. I was careful not to touch anything with the contaminated Tyvek suit and gloves. He served me a much needed glass of water with a straw. I was dripping sweat inside the suit and the tips of my gloves had pools in them.

Jim assessed the situation and said the woody plants were thin enough to mow. I asked him to do it: I was worn out. (Back in 1981, just before we moved to Columbus, Indiana, for Jim’s first big job, I called a man on Saturday about some arrangements. He answered the phone a bit breathless and said, “I’ve been working in the strawberries. Excuse the language, but I’m pooped.” I thought it was charming and chivalrous. It wasn’t until years later that I realized he considered ‘pooped’ improper because it implied excrement. What impeccable manners.)

Jim put white plastic garbage bags over his shoes and made three passes with the mower, creating a swath of mowed grass and weeds six feet wide. We watched for a rash, but none developed. He’ll probably finish the job today, before we leave for Utah.

As I worked on my poison ivy project I started writing a sermon in my head, all about facing a nasty job early on when it is manageable. I imagine the original project would have taken an hour. (Actually I imagined it would have taken a half an hour but I am very bad at estimating projects.) The sermon seemed very wise and nuanced, but now that I’m writing this, I’ve lost most of the thread. It’s really pretty simple. I had a nasty but doable task. I put it off. I put it off some more. The ivy wasn’t waiting for me. I didn’t even realize how much volume had grown over the six weeks, since it was hidden among the weeds. Many of the vines were under the grass and weren’t visible until I started pulling one end.

Poison ivy is pernicious. It manifests in many ways. It can be a single plant, a bush, a vine among the grass, or a vine up a tree trunk. It does always have three leaves, but they can be any shade of green from light to dark. The leaves can be shiny or dull and have smooth edges or a few coarse notches.

I did develop a small rash, under my unprotected chin. I went to urgent care, remembering the painful incident five years ago where a single bump became extensive rashes on both arms, severe enough that I couldn’t bend my elbows for days until I went to urgent care in Charleston and got a steroid shot and oral medication.

Jim, of course, did some web reading and found that best practices is to use herbicide to kill the ivy. Pulling it stimulated growth of the roots. Unfortunately, a herbicide would kill the grass too and leave a large area bare. For now, Jim will keep mowing and warn visitors to stay away.

Elbows and Steroids

Two weeks ago, I did some ambitious weeding, eradicating the extremely invasive garlic mustard (such an innocuous name) from my north yard. I worked on it several hours.

I saw some wild raspberry brambles, which produce small, dryish berries, and I pulled them. There must have been some other ‘leaves of three’, but I didn’t notice them.

Two days later, driving to Charleston, South Carolina, for Spoleto Music Festival, I developed a large welt on the inside of my upper arm and a small patch of rash below my elbow. I thought it was an allergic reaction to a spider bite. Over the next six days, more and more tiny red bumps erupted on the inside of my arms, little pin-pricks, smaller than mosquito bites, developing into archipelagos surrounded by seas of hot, angry red skin. By Wednesday, I could barely bend my arms. After our last concert, a sweet usher noticed me leaving. She pointed to my arms and said, “Is that poison ivy? It looks very painful. I've had that. The only thing that works is steroids.”

We found an urgent care office and I got a steroid shot. I'm sure it didn't have an immediate effect, but I felt instantly better: the desperation of the past six days melted away. Oral prednisone promised steady recovery.

My dad, Dr. George G. Hazen, received a patent in 1963 for a process simplifying and speeding the production of steroids (particularly A-anhydrosteroids from ll-hydroxy-steroids). I'm grateful for his careful and creative research.

I hoped our vacation would include time reading and writing. However, the rashes on my arms made it painful and difficult to bend my elbows enough to use the keyboard, hold a book, or even help with a jigsaw puzzle.

I never realized what a blessing elbows are. I spent several days with my arms out straight, careful not to bump them on anything, and several nights sleeping on my back, Ziploc bags full of crushed ice tied to both arms with long black sox.

The concerts were wonderful: the Miami City Ballet, Samuel Barber's Adagio, an Australian circus troupe, Backbone, taking on gravity and other myths. But there were many uncomfortable hours of inactivity.

I understand how useful opposable thumbs are in making and handling tools. But elbows: I hope I never take them for granted again.