I took a closer look at the ivy growing on the tree and all along the fence line. The good news is that it looks like English ivy. The non-poisonous kind.
But that doesn't mean that poison ivy might not be lurking there.
The bad news is that I really can't go all willy-nilly with the Round-up because that will kill everything. And while I really don't want ivy all over the place, I would rather be organic in its removal than getting all nuclear about it. Because I do want to eventually grow things there and I don't want to poison my dog.
It's been a few days since the closing and it's only in brief moments where the realization sets in that I bought a house!
I spent the weekend clearing out the overgrowth of ivy and the three years worth of leaves that have built up along the house.
At first glance, those hedges on the right look full and lush. But that would be a lie. It was intertwined with ivy and suffocating underneath.
There was about 1.5 feet of decaying leaves behind the hedges and thorny tendrils of ivy.
As I reached my hand among the branches I kept praying that I wouldn't see a face of any creature staring back at me.
After many hours I cleared out all the crap.
All that's left now looks like a barren wasteland. But what is left are branches that are alive and have leaves on them. I'm hoping that they will actually bloom and come back to life.
I even cleared out the side yard of the evil ivy.
Since this area gets full sun, I think I can see some sunflowers planted there.
Here is the result of my hard work. Actually, that's not all of it. I need more bags. And a permit to get my yard waste picked up.
Oh, home ownership. We will have a bi-polar relationship.
I've always wanted to learn how to sail. So when the "I've Always Wanted To..." meetup group offered a sailing lesson, I signed up immediately.
Saturday at noon, the class started at Lake Johnson in Raleigh. There were 8 of us in the 6 hour class. Our instructor was Margaret, a 77 year old woman who had been sailing and teaching it since she was 17. So with 50+ years of being on the water, she was a firecracker.
We learned on Sunfish sailboats, a cute little boat that skims easily across the water.
There's nothing quite like catching the wind in your sail and taking off. One hand on the tiller and one hand on the line holding the sail taut. I was a sailor!
I signed up to play softball for my town recreational league. We had practice for a few weeks and our second game last night.
I lovingly call ourselves the Bad News Bears. Many of the players on the team haven't really played before. Some, like me, haven't played competitively in years. But we all knew going into this that we were playing for fun and if we happened to win some games, then that was a bonus.
So far we've lost both our games. By at least 10 runs. Sigh.
The problem isn't that we're all awful. There are some good players on the team. One of the problems is that it takes some time for our hitting to come alive. Some of our errors in the field make me want to cringe. But the biggest problem of all is that we don't have a consistent pitcher.
Our league is slow pitch, which means the arc of the ball has to be between 6 and 12 feet off the ground. As opposed to fast pitch, the intent isn't to strike the batter out, but to get her to hit the ball somewhere that she doesn't want to.
Our pitchers have trouble reaching the plate or just can't make it hittable. And that walks in a lot of runs.
But what sucked the most about yesterday was that I pulled my lift quadricep on the first play of the game. I sprinted to get a foul ball from left field and I felt the pop. I finished the inning pounding my leg and trying to walk, but it was useless. Thankfully, nothing was hit to me the rest of the inning because I was done.
There was a sharp pain at the top of my thigh, right where it connects to my hip. I could walk with a limp, but the slightest movement could give me such a jolt that I had to fight crying out in pain. I sat the rest of the game on the bench with an ice pack on my leg, slowly leaking and drenching my pants that eventually froze me out on a chilly evening. I didn't leave right away because I wanted to be a good and supportive team player. I also wanted to make sure that I'd be able to drive home. My car is stick and I needed my left leg to push in the clutch.
When I finally got home that night, I finally had to be a baby and cry out in pain when it hurt. Barry came over to kiss my face each time, confused as to what was wrong with me. I puttered around slowly and put a Tiger Balm patch on my leg for some much needed relief.
Laying in bed with an ice pack on my raised leg, I felt old and helpless. And I felt really far away from home.
Every time I explore the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area, I find something that makes me love North Carolina even more.
Yesterday my group of girlfriends who I call the Carolina Girls (they're a separate group from my sorority sisters but who are equally as awesome) all met at Duke Gardens for a picnic. The day started off gray and a little chilly, but the sky eventually cleared up and turned very warm.
We found a bench at the edge of a huge open space and laid out our picnic spread: chicken salad, mixed greens, fruit, cheese, french bread, chocolate cake and mimosas. It was a lovely, relatively healthy and easy meal. This was not your typical peanut butter and jelly picnic. We had some style.
We lounged on our picnic blankets and tailgating chairs and chatted for four hours as we sipped our mimosas and watched families playing on the lawn. In the distance a string orchestra played for the Duke University alumnae weekend event and the Easter Bunny even made an appearance.
It was such an enjoyable afternoon. I was gastronomically and mentally satisfied as I was stuffed with good food, good conversation and good company. I didn't really want to move because that would have required me to unbutton my pants.
At 3:30 in the afternoon, we reluctantly gathered ourselves and our belongings and as Kristin called it, "headed back into reality". As the ladies went back to their cars, I wandered around the tulip garden a little bit longer to admire the color display.
I just signed up for a recreational softball league and I am so excited. I haven't played in years. Damn, it's been almost ten years.
I miss the smell of the grass and taste of grit in my mouth after I slid into third base. I miss the sweat and the grass stain on my pants and the ice cream (in high school) or the beers (at work) the team would get after a game.
I miss the feeling of being part of a team. Cheering for someone up at bat or trying to psyche out the pitcher. Of the inside-out rally caps or the silly superstitions we had to follow in order to win a game.
I miss the singing on the bus on the way to games and dumping the water cooler over our coach when we won.
I miss how my thighs used to look when I was 17 years old. Crap.
I love that I have nearby access to wonderful parks. So many trails for Barry and I to explore and pine cones to stomp on. There's nothing quite as satisfying to me as to hear their crunch under my feet.
Saturday night, Raleigh got hit with its first snowfall. Granted, it was just a dusting, but it was pretty. And the best part was that it was gone the next day.
It's a far cry from the crap I used to get back home.
I had a great Labor Day weekend here in Raleigh. It was full of activities that made me appreciate all that I have around me.
Friday was First Friday in Raleigh. It's an art celebration on the first Friday of each month. I love it because not only to art galleries participate, but local businesses turn into galleries as well to showcase local artists as well as their products. I picked up a cute necklace and wore it proudly the rest of the evening.
Among the cobblestone streets of Moore Square you can also find musical artists to entertain you. This band had the crowd dancing in the streets, myself included.
Saturday afternoon I joined a MeetUp group to go horseback riding at Dead Broke Farm in northwest Raleigh. There was a group of 12 people, some who hadn't rode a horse in 15 years (like me) and others who never rode a horse at all.
It was a slow trail ride. Quite boring actually, with all the stopping and starting. I was getting annoyed by two newbies who had no idea what they were doing. One woman kept screaming practically every time her horse moved. She sucked. Then this other guy -- this very large man on an equally large horse -- tried to reason with his horse when it wandered into the woods. "Why must you go into the woods?" I thought that if he actually held the reigns and steered his horse he'd get better results.
My horse, Keeper was a sweetie. Except that he/she (?) kept turning its head to nibble on my foot. I wasn't sure if it liked me or hated me.
There were a few cool people in the group. Afterward we went to a local bar for some beers and burgers. A good way to end off the afternoon.
Sunday was mainly spent running errands, but I hung out with new friends that night. We ate pitas and hummus and drank wine on the deck in Durham while we watched the dogs run around. I did not bring Barry. He's kind of an ass and I wasn't in the mood to babysit my dog.
Monday was the best day of all. The weather was gorgeous. Just right for a baseball game. Since I came to North Carolina, I knew I had to go see a Durham Bulls game. Bull Durham is one of my favorite movies and I needed to go and pay homage.
The ballpark was beautiful and my seats were right behind first base, a few levels up. It was a long game -- about 3 hours. But the Bulls finally won 6-5 in the 12th inning.
A great end to a great day to an even greater weekend.
I thought the feeling of invincibility only lasted during your teenage years?
Last week, I decided to get busy on some yardwork at my new home. There was a patch of overgrown shrubs in the driveway turn-around area. There were masses of weeds and ivy that were suffocating the small azalea bushes that were just trying to hang on.
So I wore my floppy sun-hat and a pair of gardening gloves and started to pull up all the crap.
"Be careful, there's some poison ivy in there", Charles warned from the garage.
"Bah! I don't see any poison ivy." I thought back to my Girl Scout days when my handbook identified poison ivy as shiny leaves rimmed in red that were in clusters of threes.
This is what I was thinking of:
But apparently it doesn't always look like this.
So in a manic zeal of trying to be useful, I pulled at weeds, tore apart vines that grew among the shrubs, wiped away sweat with my (unknowingly tainted) gardening gloves and proudly displayed a 6 foot vine and root that I pulled from the ground, as if it was a prize fish freshly caught.
The results of my ineptitude did not reveal itself until the next day. There was some mild redness, a little itchiness. But we were on our way to driving to Disney World. I didn't have time to spend worrying about my itchy arms. So I picked up some cortisone and we were off.
A week later, my arms, and now chest and sides, are bearing the brunt of my stupidity.
Yes, that was poison ivy. No, I will not be doing any more 'gardening' in weedy areas anymore. Lesson learned.
