Hello everyone, yes, I realize it has been 2.5 weeks since I posted anything tiny home related on here, and I would say I’m sorry, but I’m not. A lot happened in my personal life in those 2.5 weeks and I needed time to gather my thoughts and make sure I was good before talking to 445 people. Ahem. But I’m good!
Anyways, today’s episode of tiny home posts features the *beautiful* yet *itchy* ivy wall on the north side of the house, as well as the fun adventure I had removing the shit. I also discuss the work my dad put in blading off the north side bushes – thanks dad!
For the past few years, the weeds around the woodshed have grown out. A lot. There are huge bushes shrouding the north wall, and thick ivy bushes crawling up the front porch columns, as well as up the wall under the window. I wasn’t sure how we were going to remove the giant bushes, but shout-out to my dad for renting a tractor and blade from Rodger’s Rental in Centralia and blading the bushes away. The before and after’s are pretty shocking if I do say so myself.
Before – dad’s about to blade the bushes! We were all curious as to what it would look like after
After – Dad bladed away the bushes, revealing the stone foundation
Doesn’t it look SO much better?! Having those bushes gone reveals the stone foundation the building was built on, including the basement window, and gives us a better idea of the building’s potential. We can also see the creeping poison ivy, and fern covered front porch. But that was my next project.
The weekend after dad bladed off the bushes, I set to work spraying the poison ivy. You should have seen me – leggings tucked into tall socks, rainboots on, long sleeve tshirt tucked into leggings, gardening gloves, bandana covering my neck. I looked a damn fool rocking my weed killing get-up in 90 degree weather, but dammit I did it!
Pictured below is a close-up of the beeeeautiful ivy covered north wall, the wall with “The Woodshed” sign. This was the weekend I learned the difference between english and poison ivy. English is a darker green leaf, which sprouts off a climbing vine. The vine has little feathery feet which allow it to latch and grow up any surface. Whereas poison ivy is slightly lighter in color, with 3 individual leaves on each stem. English isn’t poisonous, but poison ivy is.
Crawling English Ivy
Continued English Ivy on the North Wall
Ivy and ferns near the porch
Sigh.
It seriously hurt my heart having to tear off that English Ivy – I’ve always loved the look of a building covered in ferns, so to have my own building covered in it, but yet needing to remove it, was kinda upsetting. I’m hoping once the building is finished I can coax some into growing again, but we shall see.
Below is the after – ivy removed, cluster of ferns near the porch *mostly* gone, and beautiful handsawn lumber revealed.
While I did successfully remove most of the English and Poison ivy that had been growing around my building, I still need to scrape all the other weeds out from around the porch, and from further down the building, near the basement entrance. That’s definitely a project from another day as I am out of poison ivy killer and will resort to burning them off – apparently dad has a miniature flame thrower thingimajij and uses it to burn weeds! That should be quite the time, especially seeing as I’m afraid of fire LMAO.
While garden-esque work is not my favorite, it’s very rewarding to be able to see such a big difference in a couple hours. And I learned something along the way! This is definitely a long process, but I am so thankful I have the opportunity to do something like this.
I will keep you guys posted, I am catching up on my tiny home blog updates – I have EXCITING news coming later this week about this past weekend’s discovery, stay tuned!
Anyways, I have to go. I’ve been blogging at work for like 2 hours now and should probably go do actual work. Oh how I wish I were self-employed. Sigh.
Sincerely,
Sarah
signedsarah.com 
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