Kendra vs. the Vine, pt 2

It appears that I missed a few roots - the vine popped up again where I had been painstakingly digging it out. I think I'm going to have to do some research and figure out what my options are. Mom and Sister came to help with the yard on Sunday morning, so Mom now has also faced down the vine.


The Morris women hell-bent on stress relief: 10,000. The Bork yard: 0.

I've got a plan for the backyard now, and it involves quite a bit of demo of existing plants and moving of pathways (the latter of which are just bark with edging strips - at least I'm not moving brick or concrete!). After the last few months of stress, I thought that a little demo might be a good stress reliever for all of us, even if it is 100* outside around noon. We got an early start and quite a bit done. I was even able to replant the bed along the fence with plants more befitting The Plan - a casual, smidge-on-the-wild-side, cottage-type garden. Drought tolerant, of course. Witness the results:

The remnants of the Indian Hawthorn bushes from the fence bed and the stumps in the foreground.

Sister's demo work - I think I'm going to start calling her the wrecking crew.

Looking back at where the Lantana bushes used to be - yep, that blank spot there.

New plants. A mixture of Sweet Pea Bushes, Yarrow, Lavendar, and Russian Sage.

(...several months, a wedding, and a honeymoon later we find our intrepid author now an official spouse and facing a yard suffering from winter-, rain-, and wedding-induced neglect.)


It's innocent-looking enough, this vine. Gary even commented on how pretty its flowers are.


It's of the devil. It spreads underground via a root system that breaks if you look at it cross-eyed. I've had to resort to digging a pit in the area where I know its spreading and sifting through the shovelfuls of dirt by hand.

(It may not look like much, but it's about 6-8" deep.) So this is how I have spent my last few weekends - battling this vine. Otherwise, it spreads, climbs up the other plants, and slowly chokes out the plants I would really prefer to have. Of course the only thing it doesn't seem to be choking out is the stupid Lantana, which is the plant in the backyard that I would really love to see go.

We did have some help today in the campaign against the yard, thankfully. And we will next Saturday as well. We'll probably get the vegetable garden built and planted just in time for the fall crops at the rate we're going!