In order to move I have to sell my condo. In order to sell my condo I have to get rid of the massive wall of ivy that I have had growing since I moved into the place. It's not always been the easiest to maintain but for the most part it's been a glorious wall of green that I have been very proud of. And then, about 12 months ago, the center part got sick. The leaves started to turn yellow and spotty and die. And then a different thing happened. Suddenly one leaf in the middle of a vine would just wilt, turn gray and die. And the in a different spot on the same vine it would happen again. There were 2 forces at work that I could see. And the whole wall started to die from the middle out.
I went to my go-to plant guy...no help. I took pictures (not the actual leaves since I didn't want to infect any other plants) to plants stores here and in Madison. No one knew. I did a search online and came up with zip. Nothing like it. So the only solution seemed to be to cut them down. And by this point, what had been a glorious wall of lush green was beginning to look like it had been sprayed with Agent Orange. So I cut it all down. Not only was this emotionally disturbing for me, the ivy has fine hairs on it that get everywhere and make me sneeze and itch. At least the mess of cutting it down was not as bad as it might have been since I put down plastic paint cover sheets and then just folded it all up and dumped it. Not into the garbage but off the back of the terrace onto the ground in the back of the condo building (all real ecological-like).
So now I have 18 pots with infected dirt in them (one of the pots is out of the picture and I am sure my go-to plant guy will want to point out that there are only 17 of them). The empty vines will leaf out. But they will all die much to my chagrin : (
