Fighting the Weeds

Things are getting dry in the garden, but several of my more noxious weeds continue to thrive.  Earlier, I cut back the trumpet creeper along the side street, and sprayed the remnants. That held it back for a while, but now its up and thriving again. So again today, I cut and sprayed RoundUp on it, hoping to kill what I imagine is a giant and thriving root system.

A couple of years ago, a volunteer tree showed up that I never positively identified. I thought "sumac" when I looked at it, but it was all bristly and spiky along the stem. It grew in two years to over six feet tall, and I decided last summer that if it did NOT have good fall color (as sumacs should) it was a goner.  Sadly (for it), the green compound leaves turned a blah shade of yellow and just kind of faded away. So this spring, I got the heavy duty loppers and cut off the two inch diameter trunk near ground level.

But now I've got new sprouts coming up in a four foot radius from where I cut the main trunk! What is this thing? How can I get rid of it?  I mowed it off about three weeks ago, but its up again and thriving. So this morning I sprayed and sprayed it. We'll see what happens. I can see I'm going to have to get out the book and figure out what I'm dealing with. I scrolled through the digital archives, and it appears I never took a picture of the original tree - probably because it wasn't worth it, not so attractive.

I also went after poison ivy today.  This is a lovely native vine, with beautiful fall color and berries valuable for birds. However, I can't have it here because I am quite sensitive to it - I've had to have systemic steroids to fight it back, and it also often gets infected. So today I sprayed with RoundUp every place I saw it - three or four outbreaks in the front.

In May, I spent time fighting back the vines in my butterfly bush and in back of the house.  Again, the mechanical removal allowed the underlying plants to thrive, but the ipomea vines are back and rampant once again. I didn't spray at all last time, so this time, with just a few additional minutes to spend, I went for it. It's hard to separate out the vines from what they are growing on, but I foamed away on some of the biggest clumps. Hopefully, I'm only getting the bad stuff, but we'll have to see.