O Sumac, My Sumac -- meet Cyndi "Lopper"





Some people have oak-lined driveways. We have a sumac-lined back yard.



We have a you-know-what load of sumac in our yard. Well, bordering our  yard. As you can see here, it's not exactly small either.

It's not that we hate it, it's just... a tree weed. Really. It's the weed of the tree kingdom. If you didn't want a tree to grow in your yard, sumac would show up, knock on the door and announce that it had planted 35 of its children along the periphery of your property. And then those children would invite their sumac friends over to play. And then those friends would move in too. And then pretty soon, you've got a yard full of tree weeds.






Sumac and ROS. Disregard the pile of sand. We'll get to that eventually.

  This past October, we had a terrible snow storm. It was one of those freak, way-too-early-in-the-season-even-for-New-England-nobody-is-prepared-to-lose-power-for-five-days kinds of storms. When we moved in last August, the most beautiful thing in the yard was the Rose of Sharon.  This thing has the most beautiful colored blossoms on it that I have ever seen.  Kind of a weird purpley-blue combo. So of course, because we absolutely loved the Rose of Sharons (ROS now for blogging purposes), they had to be the first things Mother Nature attacked in her pre-winter snit.




After the help of Cyndi Lopper. (Yes, I know that's not how you spell her name.)

 We are now on a mission to save our ROS. There are three of them, and two of those are in rough shape.  They had also been taken over by the sumac, so Josh commandeered a tool from his brother's shed that is officially known in our family as the "lopper."  The "lopper" kind of looks like a giant set of pliers, but has a mini chain saw at the end.  Totally awesome. It cuts through sumac like buttah. Josh got kind of this crazed look in his eye when he turned it on.  All that power in one machine...




Rescue attempts for the Rose of Sharon.

Josh mowed through the majority of our sumac issues in about an hour, and that included clean up.  So the "lopper" is a hit. We're going to introduce Cyndi (the "lopper") to our pine tree in the front yard that has a ton of dead branches on it. I think they will like each other very much.

We're now attempting to figure out how to help the ROS. We called an arborist who basically wants $500 to come in and cut them down. I told Josh that Cyndi and I can cut them down for free. Girls just want to have fun.




An amusing side story for which I have no photo (and really wish I did.)  Everyone who sees or hears of our sumac assumes it is poisonous and we are going to die because it is in our yard. Poison sumac is a real thing, but it is pretty rare and is typically found in swamps. (Also, it has white flowers.)  Our sumac is ridiculously common and has red flowers.  My father and Josh had a bit of a disagreement the other night over whether Josh should be wearing gloves when handling the sumac, to which my husband of course said no. He then went over and hauled a leaf off a sumac and ate it while my father watched in horror. Good times.