Perfect Conditions For Pernicious Plant Pulling

Instead if a cold, white Christmas, we had a cool wet one.   When the rain finally stopped,  Ed went outside to see what he could find to do that would take advantage of this somewhat unusual chance to work outside at the end of December.  He settled on pulling out Japanese honeysuckle bushes.  With the soft wet ground, he could easily pull bushes that wouldn't budge an inch in dry weather.  Ed uses a neat cable with a ring on each end.  Not unlike a dog choke collar, the cable goes around the bush, through one ring and the other ring goes over the hitch on the back of the truck.  We just hop in the truck and let the Ranger gingerly do the hard work.      

Ed was elated at his success.  By pulling on the bush, easing up and then pulling again, he made short work of the smaller bushes.  He just tossed them in the truck replaced the sod in the hole that remained and moved on to the next bush.  He removed bushes that were too close to the driveway, bushes that he has been mowing around for ages and any bush that seemed to be where he would prefer it be gone.  With all that success under his belt he started to pull even bigger bushes.

Look carefully and you can see Ed on one of his trips to drop off bushes at the brush pile down at the gravel bank .

Quite an impressive pile of bushes  were gathering at the gravel bank.  Ed was having so much fun there is no telling how many bushes would have made it here, but perhaps that really big bush was a bit too much. While under pressure, one of the rings separated and flew off the cable never to be seen again.  That brought the bush pulling to a swift halt.  A new cable has been ordered.  When conditions are like this again he wants to be ready!

My how nice those bushes look when they are gone.  There are literally hundreds more yet to pull.

Ed cut up the  big bushes so that he could toss them on the brush pile.  It is all ready in case Ed gets another day to indulge in this kind of outdoor fun.