Good idea, but I found an expert who will make house-calls. I hired a landscaper to come out and give me an estimate on clearing some "brush" (okay, I may have misled him a bit, but I didn't think he'd come out to give me an estimate for clearing out some suspicious vines).
He's due out on Monday morning. If this *is* poison ivy, I'd expect him to recognize it and either tell me to go to heck or give me an estimate for clearing it out.
I can't do it myself. Partly because I'm *severely* allergic and the risk is too high for myself and partly because I have a 3 year old daughter who is also severely allergic (hospitalized last year for what started as a minor rash and grew into anaphylaxis in the matter of a few hours) and I doubt I'd be able to decontaminate myself completely enough to go back into my own house.
So far as I can see, the suspect vines are all in the back yard or on the fence that connects to the back yard. I'm thinking I'll just take the whole fence out, get a bucket scoop in here and take the top foot or so of topsoil off for a foot either side of the fence, have some clean fill brought in and then put a new fence in. Then fill the yard with 6 inches or so of new topsoil (after spraying the whole thing down with brush-be-gone).
Extreme, but the yard needs the dirt anyway and I don't want to risk leaving any of the oil behind on the surface of the ground.
Or, this will turn out to be creeping triffids or something and I don't have anything to worry about.
Honestly, have you ever seen 4 inch wide poison ivy leaves? I've never. But it *looks* just like PI to me, except about three times too big.
Regards,
PhirePhly |
