It's so hard to hold out hope for spring when it seems so far away. It seems more distant now than it did in November, because of Christmas being such a nice distraction from Old Man Winter.
We do get occasional warm-ups here in the Midwest, for which I am grateful. When the ground thawed, I checked for tulips coming up. Not too surprisingly, none were seen.
Then along came another cold spell and the ground is once again hard underfoot. It makes me feel cranky. There's nothing to do for it but get outside instead of looking out the window and dreading the cold. Time to use all those woolies I knitted last summer.
My favorite sycamore tree had dropped some limbs, so I went up there with the pruners to make a path through the underbrush to reach them. This is the time of year to cut the poison ivy vines at the base. Since my last vine disposal work, the little upstart vines resumed their upward climb. Those guys look harmless compared to the huge tree, but they soon get big, branch out and hog all the sunlight.
It's a delicate matter to pull them down because I daren't touch them with my gloves, and must use the pruners to grab them. As a last defiant act, the vines seem determined to slap me in the face as they fall. "Take that!" they say.
Nearby smaller trees appeared to be jealous that I was giving special treatment to the giant tree. I believe I heard, through the resurrected grapevines, muffled accusations that I might be a member of Congress, the way I favored the big guys. Ouch, that hurt.
So I had to free some of them from these nasty greenbriar vines. They don't hug the bark like the poison ivy vines, but hitch a ride on other brush until they can get a grasp on anything headed toward the treetops. The purple one on the left is a blackcap, which has tasty berries and doesn't climb. It just got in with a bad crowd.
My pruning never makes a lasting difference to the rampant vines, but it does get me outside in January. Outdoors, I never feel cranky.
