The Evil Buckthorn

Yesterday I took a day to catch up on chores in the yard.  My hamstrings are singing today so I know I got a lot of work done.  I picked up all the leaves and filled the two compost piles.  I spread a layer of dirt between every three bags of grass and leaves to innoculate the mixture with microorganisms that will chew those leaves and grass clippings into healthy, rich compost.  I let the chickens out to roam, filled the bird feeders, and emptied the rainbarrel and put it away for the season. I reached my arm W A Y  down into the pond to lift the water lily out and store it in the garage for the winter - a cold and slimy task.  I cleaned out the coop and gave the chickens fresh bedding and food.  I dug out the bulbs and threw out the annuals on the deck.  When I got the ladder out by the oak tree to replace the nose that fell off my "tree face" a pileated woodpecker landed about 5 feet from my head.  I hugged the oak tree and held my breath as I balanced on the ladder with a mixture of fear and awe as the female woodpecker hopped about on the branch.  She flew away after about 10 seconds but those were 10 awesome seconds!  I spent two hours fighting the war against invasive buckthorn.  I worked on the area next to my driveway again. I took out at least 100 trees ranging in size from 12 inches to 18 feet.  I had to use my bow saw on about 10 trees, they were that thick.  I used my nippers on the smaller trees.  Every tree trunk was sprayed with "Brush B Gone."  In the fall, the buckthorn will pull it's liquids down into the roots so fall is the perfect time to spray buckthorn stumps with poison. I told some trees to "suck it" as I sprayed poison on the cut.  The buckthorn is a crafty tree.  Although easy to find because of their waxy dark green leaves in the fall when most of the other trees are bare, some grow crooked so you can hardly find their trunk.  Some of the smaller trees will hide their trunk under the leaves so you can't spray them with poison unless you move the leaves.  Some buckthorn will grow smaller branches that slap you in the face as you cut down the main trunk.  I spent two hours cutting and poisoning buckthorn and I didn't get them all.  I will keep working on it.  I notice my neighbors have lots of buckthorn growing in their woods too.  If there are buckthorn large enough to bear fruit in the neighborhood, it will keep coming back.  The buckthorn berries have a laxative effect.  One master naturalist told me that a buckthorn berry will spend twenty seconds in a bird before being expelled from the other end.  I don't know if that is true but it sure is an impressive figure.