Brooke here:

There’s one day every winter where the earth remembers what it wants to be doing.  It usually takes another couple of months to shake itself awake, but there’s always that one day when the ground twitches.

I love that day.  Today is that day.  I have to keep reminding myself that while it’s a lovely 40 degrees and sunny today, it’s probably going to snow six more times and wolves will overtake the garden before spring really and truly arrives.

Still, there’s no better time to remove ivy than when the snakes and other wiggly-things are still dormant.  I’m afraid the next few weeks of posts will be “Picture of Thing covered in ivy” followed by “Picture of Thing with ivy removed.”

I’m rather sad the ivy had to go on this wall, as the fountain looked nicer when tucked within the greenery.  Unfortunately, the ivy was crawling into the windows and under the wood siding and was starting to get its roots into the masonry between the bricks.  I’m going to have to wait for some of the pieces I couldn’t remove by hand-pulling to dry, then chisel them off.  And get a ladder and a long screwdriver to dig out the remaining ivy rooted under the board-and-beam siding above the brick.  Since we are drowning in projects, we”re probably not going to landscape this area until next year so we’ll continue to smother the ivy groundcover around this wall with cardboard sheeting.  It typically takes ivy six months to a year to die off through smothering, so rather than remove the ivy and lose the topsoil along with the roots, a thick layer of cardboard will preserve the topsoil while also killing this nasty stuff until it’s time to landscape that area.

More ivy removal throughout the week, I’m sure.