Well now… turns out, I am allergic to poison ivy. When I started working on the barn, I kept a close eye out for poison ivy and had my trusty Picture This app at my side to make sure I didn’t accidentally start pulling it up.
With any plant that looked even close to being poison ivy, I pulled out my app. I discovered Riverbank Grape, which was a huge vine that was growing up and over some of the sheds, and on top of the barn.
There was also black raspberry, frost grape, a silver maple, a pecan tree, southern catalpa, bridal wreath spirea, and showy stonecrop. But no poison ivy. No, I didn’t suspect the two trees of being poison ivy, but I wanted to know what it was.
My mistake was looking for the poison ivy leaves. I couldn’t see any because they were in the midst of all the English ivy. It was only after I started pulling down these huge vines from the side of the barn, vines that looked wicked, and were filled with dust and spores, that I learned the difference between a poison ivy vine and the English ivy vine. They look similar, but the poison ivy is just wicked looking.
You can see the two below. The first picture is English Ivy, which is also poisonous to some people. The second picture is the vine of the poison ivy.
My next discovery was the Tecnu Detox Wipes skin cleanser. I keep a box of wipes nearby every time I go out to work on the overgrowth.
