Girl vs Kudzu

I had the day off of work yesterday. It was a typical Baltimore June day (read, HOT) and I decided I absolutely had to trim the vines on the side of the house. We have a beautiful climbing hydrangea that is very quickly being taken over by kudzu.

Now I don't have anything against Kudzu, except maybe that it is taking over the entire southeast. It has very pretty berries in the fall, a healthy green foliage and spreads like wildfire. If you haven't seen some of the crazy pictures out there, check out the Wikipedia article.

I spent the afternoon high on a ladder pulling it down. As you can see I now have a clear patch on the wall but still have to get up to the top and pull the stuff off the front. The Hydrangea is the vine to the right and if I had taken the picture correctly you could see that there's another hydrangea vine that goes around the front of the house. It's very slow growing so doesn't overwhelm, but with the kudzu killing it off, it needed help.

As you can see here, the kudzu is now overwhelming the trash can. :-)