Last week I took some time to clear a big section of my yard that had years of leaves piled up. I'm talking about a 100 foot long, six foot wide path that had four inches of leaves and pine needles in a compacted mess. I hired a helper, Derek - a nice college kid who is a family-friend of a friend. He and I worked for seven hours and picked up 54 bags of debris. It felt pretty good to get that project done...until...the itch started. I have have poison ivy hundreds of times, but never like this. It's all over my arms and legs as you can see, especially my knees and forearms. It was a warm, muggy day so i was wearing short and a tee shirt. After all... I didn't actually SEE any poison ivy. But it was there...
This is my first summer in our house, as my wife and I just bought it over the winter. Apparently the previous owner must have had all the weeds killed and cut down along the pond at the edge of the property. So, we were left with just a bunch of stalks and stems sticking up through the fallen oak leaves and pine needles. Turns out those sticks must be poison ivy/oak/sumac!
Let this be a lesson...even if you don't see the green and red "leaves of three," the urushiol, the poison oil in those plants can still stay in the stems and roots. A word of warning from "Itchy Bill!"