September 20th, 2019

This is our backyard.  Well most of it anyway, try as I may I cannot get it all in one photo but for illustrative purposes, this will suffice.

As you can see, other than a few spots that I need to re-seed, it's not bad.  It's flat, it's green, it is of decent size and has green stuff  (i.e. various trees and shrubs) growing around the entire perimeter.  We were very fortunate because this was all done by the previous owners.  Other than making sure it is mowed each week (landscape service) and the shrubs periodically trimmed (us) and the shed palm fronds collected (also us), we have done exactly nothing with it. And I mean nothing.

Other than the time necessary to trim shrubs and pick up deadfall/palm fronds,  and my taking photos now and again, we simply do not use the backyard.  It survives merely as a buffer between us and the single row of houses behind us.  (beyond the houses behind us is water FYI, which is why it's merely a single row). We like that bufferzone though. A little elbow room between neighbors is always a good thing.

Why do we not use it, you ask?  Well, we have no dog that needs to run around outside.  We have no small children in our lives who might wish to play outside.  We haven't put any thought (or more importantly money, yet)  into a real garden or a patio or a pool or any of the many other reasons a person might want to hang around their own backyard because we have been concentrating on reno-ing the inside.  I suppose we could put up a volleyball net or a croquet court, after all it's nice and flat which makes it about perfect But a two person game of anything remotely athletic, especially when one of the persons is me,  just isn't all that much fun.

Consequently, I wasn't really up to date on any of the goings on in our yard other than to occasionally note a passing bobcat or raccoon.

Now for whatever reason, I cannot imagine what it would be, the previous owners had grass/groundcover/clover serving as lawn over all of the yard except the trees and shrubs along both sides and a section of........let's call it wildflowers.....across the back.  Just in front of the backfence is patch about two feet deep.  Most of it is filled with some crazy prolific purple flowers and the beginnings of a couple of palm trees of one sort of another, a little bit of this'n'that white, yellow, pink and orange blooming things that I do not recognize.  So I refer to it as "the garden".  It seemed to be intentional so I just rolled with it.

And mostly, until this morning anyway, ignored it.  It seemed to be doing just fine on it's own, as do most green and growing things in this land of tropical botanical generosity.  But as I was walking the perimeter today, picking up anything that fell down, I realized that there is some vine that seems to have taken over the entire "garden" at the back of the yard.  When the heck did this happen?

 It's not just growing like a lacy blanket over the top of the flowers (you can see the heads of some of them poking through) but also up and over the back fence.  And now it's trying to wind it's way around the trees and shrubs!  For Heaven's Sakes!  

I am going to have to put on long pants, long sleeves, closed toe shoes with socks and start pulling all of that mysterious vine out. Dang.  

It actually seems a shame because it's really kind of pretty. If it just wasn't so aggressive I would allow it to co-exist!  It has these adorable little twirling tendrils and teensy flowers and every once in awhile an orange  gourd looking thing growing on it.

It seems to have grown up overnight, much like Jack's magic beans.  I swear to you that last week when I was prowling around out there taking some photos and there were no vines. At least not that I could see. Maybe they were lurking underneath other stuff, I don't know. Sneaky buggers.  Or maybe it's just some crazy agressive thing that grows super fast.

Whatever it is, it's gotta go!  It's going to choke out the "garden" and then the trees and shrubs.  It will rot the fence and eventually fill up the entire back yard and the house!  Ok ok.  It's not that dramatic.  At least I hope it's not!  Holycats!  I was just exaggerating for effect but I suppose it's not out of the realm of possible if I don't take care of it!    This could turn out to be the Vine that Ate Venice Florida!  Some sort of Alien Spores!  ARGH! I would hate to end up being a B Horror flick, really.   Soooooo obviously that is on my agenda. Great. Just what I wanted to do in 90 degrees heat and humidity.

​More joys of home ownership!