Monday, June 18, 2007

Every rose has its thorn


Now it probably seems like my work is just finding cute animals and fun stuff. But nearly every outing brings me face to face with thickets of thorns. You have green brier, cat brier, multiflora rose, Japanese barberry, blackberry, wineberry, and raspberry. Plus your thorny trees such as black locust, honeylocust, hawthorn, osage orange, etc. When I say thickets, I mean THICKETS. I have my trusty garden clippers, but that will only take you so far. Every once in awhile, you'll find a deer path that dead ends. I've had my fair share of sliding on my belly to get through a thicket. During the height of the field season, my legs are dotted with red marks from these thorns. I've had a thorn under my thumb nail. I gave out a real nice scream for that. If you are the second person to walk through a thicket, you might get whacked by a thorny branch. Last week I got to remove a dead thorny branch from my eyebrow.
These poor chumps are in Vermont removing some thickets of multiflora rose. Boy do I have some spots for them to help out.


Japanese barberry, which the deer don't eat, multiplies like crazy and has thorns like needles. These thorns seems to survive in my pants even after a wash.



4 comments:

Colleen said...

Hm. That is certainly a thorny situation!
Baaaa ha ha haaaaa

Anonymous said...

Thorns are a pain but for my money few plants in the woods are as bad as Burdock.

Kartek said...

But burdock sheds its spiny seeds for only a short time, while the thorns are always there. I'll take burdock anyday.

Jules said...

WOW those look insanely dangerous and painful!!! I cannot believe the size of them.