Annual Battle with Poison Ivy

  The ivy you see above on the poplar tree is poison ivy.  Poison ivy seems to love poplar trees. I made the mistake years ago when I tried to pull it off of a tree with my bare hands.  For two weeks I had a blistering rash on both arms.  Since then I have been careful to only cut it off where it attaches to the ground and let it die on the tree. And even doing this I wear gloves and a long sleeve shirt. This is a better method to deal with the problem because pulling off the ivy can damage the bark.

  Above you can see that the stem of the ivy can be thick.

The above picture shows the dead ivy on the tree.

In photographing the trees I happen to look up and something caught my eye!

It certainly looked like a deer head caught in the tree.  Just a tree branch from the beech tree growing next to the poplar tree.  It does make you do a double take.  If anyone is interested I would be glad to tell you where to see this interesting sight.

P.S.

Cornell University is trying to map habitat for wildlife across the United States.  If you would like to help them and make your property more habitat friendly you can go to their website for the effort.

P.S. 1

Sarah Says blog had some interesting information on CA helping her put in a rain garden.   Check it out.  I am thinking of doing this too.

P.S. 2

Only video of the week that is appropriate for this blog.