About a week ago I got this big itchy spot on my left forearm and I didn’t know what it was. After moving out here from Colorado I am continually discovering new, and usually annoying, plants and bugs that I never knew existed such as Chiggers.

So before I got this itchy spot I had been pulling weeds in my back yard. I don’t know what kind of weeds I had but they looked like Strawberry Reubarb on steroids. So I’m pulling these huge weeds by the side of my house and notice this dark green ivy plant hanging out all over the place and climbing up the siding. My first thought was to rip it out also but I thought it looked kind-of nice so I decided to leave it (hindsight being 20/20 I definately made the right choice).

So back to the itchy spot on the forearm. At first I thought it was a chigger bite since it started out as a small little bump. But as time progressed it started to get worse. I’ll spare you the details of what happens when Poison Ivy get’s worse…

I wasn’t for sure it was poison ivy because I couldn’t figure out where I had gotten it since I hadn’t been hiking deep in the back woods for quite some time, but wanting to eliminate all the possibilities I thought that I should check my back yard just in case. I got onto Google Images and searched for poison ivy only to find out that the huge growth of nice green ivy on the side of the house was not so nice after all.

After making Anna promise not to tell anyone how ignorant I was, I went to the hardware store, bought some poison ivy killer, dressed up in a sweatshirt and rubber yellow gloves, put plastic bags over my shoes and went to terminate with my spray bottle. That poison ivy will be a thing of the past in only 2 to 4 weeks.