Sky: the sun conducts from behind a bank of clouds; overhead, the half-moon loses its midnight polish, tarnishing, fading, vanishes like a magic trick. 5:37 a.m. (sunrise three minutes later than last Wednesday, July 28). 48 degrees, wind WNW 4 mph (wild geese come to mind). Leaves in motion. Clouds across the north, peach brushstrokes, grading to lavender; east of Smarts Mountain like molten iron, underbellies on fire; north, beyond Mount Moosilauke, a bruised blue-gray. South and west, clear and bright. Not a trace of fog nor a hint of smoke.
Deer tracks and bear scat in the road.
In a roadside tangle, the dark forest looming, strips of meadow flowers: goldenrod, white clover, morning glory, Queen Anne's lace, black-eyed Susan, vetch. Honey bees gather pollen, monarch nectar. Unspeakable color, Virginia creeper, one line of red in an ocean of green.
Fuzzy-headed bluebird on a fence post, second clutch out of the box. Phoebe on the next post, tail idling. Brown creeper spirals up the trunk of a large maple; thin, decurved bill taking the pulse of the tree . . . probe, probe, probe. Then, wanders under a long, curled strip of bark. Emerges. Flushes, driven away by a trio of rowdy white-breasted nuthatches. Background soundtrack: red-eyed vireos (of course) and indigo buntings.
Two house wren fledglings pester a parent, begging, the incessant demands of youth.
Poison ivy grows along the edge of my property, in a sunny strip between the woods and road. Trailing along the ground. Snaking up tree trunks. Knee-high shrubs. All my life, I've lived with the curse of poison ivy. Urushiol, the oily resin in the leaves, roots, berries, which induces the infamous blistery rash, sticks to clothes, dog fur, shoes. And, like the Tenth Plague on the House Egypt, travels with the smoke of the burning bush. During boyhood, every summer, the red, bumpy, incredibly itchy rash appeared on my arms, legs, face, stomach, sometimes . . . in unmentionable places. Once, so severely, I skipped school for several days. Calamine lotion, a summer staple, was as critical to my wellbeing as ice cream.
Botanists call ivy berries fruit flags—tiny, white, toxic knots hard as stone—that beckon robins, catbirds, flickers, waxwings, and hermit thrushes. Yellow-rumped warblers, bluebirds, thrashers, and phoebes. Maybe, tree swallows.
By necessity, I declare war on poison ivy, homemade, environmentally tolerable war. No Roundup or Ortho (far too noxious). Instead, I dissolved a cup of salt in a gallon of warm white vinegar. A couple of squirts of dish soap emulsifies the concoction. Then, I spray the leaves. Within hours, they began to wilt.
I walk around rattlesnakes. I pluck ticks. I slap mosquitoes. I bluff bears. I wear a face mask and sanitize my hands. For poison ivy, I have one strategy . . . annihilation. May the birds forgive me.
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A lifelong naturalist and Yankee fan, Ted Levin follows a trail blazed by John Burroughs and John Muir, neither of who paid baseball much attention. His work has appeared in Audubon, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, and The Daily Telegraph, among many other publications. His nonfiction works include Backtracking: The Way of Naturalist, Blood Brook: A Naturalist’s Home Ground, and Liquid Land: A Journey Through the Florida Everglades, which won the Burroughs Medal in 2004, the highest literary honor awarded to an American nature writer. E. O. Wilson called America’s Snake, Ted’s most recent book, beautifully written [demonstrating] just how good nature literature can be. He divides his time between the deck and the road.
Yikes! Poison Ivy has been the bane of my existence all my life as well--once it was all over my body and face. I'd never heard of the salt/vinegar/soap recipe--but at least it's not Roundup, which my brother uses on everything, alas. I once was standing 20 feet away from a campfire where someone had thrown this noxious plant onto the flames, and the case from the smoke was the most serious I experienced. In this situation, I support your strategy of annihilation! Nature has many defense systems, but you're being hit by three of them at once--poison ivy, ticks, and mosquitoes!
("Urushiol" sounds like an evil wizard from Tolkien!)
Take good care--
Ted, I wonder if your concoction works for the bane of my existence, Bishop’s weed? It lives forever.