Amateur gardening hour
It was a nice cool cloudy day when I got home from work, and I actually had some energy for a change, so I went and attacked that triffid in the backyard.
(Actual gardeners probably don't want to look at these pictures.)
Here's the side of the shed before I started today (click through for bigger versions). The non-evergreens are what I hacked back this weekend.
Closeup of the triffid. Looks innocent, doesn't it?
But it has thorns, oh yes indeed it does:
(This is actually from the little triffid's next-door neighbor, which was hiding among the bushes I trimmed this weekend; another stem of it is what snuck up on me. At least I'm pretty sure they're two separate plants, because of the size difference. Yes, if we'd raked the leaves out in the fall I could actually see the roots easily, but I'm not doing it now because I think we may have one more set of perennials that will be blooming.)
The triffids came out surprisingly painlessly, thanks to excess caution, leather gloves and a corduroy long-sleeved shirt, and a whole lot of luck. I thought about tackling a much larger nest of them along the fence, but decided not to push my energy or my luck. Instead I hacked back the bushes some more, because it's really hard to stop once you've started, dug up a few dandelions, and called it a night:
I don't feel as personally about the triffids by the fence, since they're easier to avoid, but they've got to come out sometime in the next couple of years, and so I might see if my luck continues to hold next time we have a cool day . . .