Poison Oak!

I have been begging Erik to help me clean up the front yard since we first bought our place last June. Unfortunately I do not have a before picture. But in our front yard we had a mossy patch of grass, a dirt mound with lavender and another bush planted right in front of our door and to the side there is an oak tree with English ivy, vinca, and blackberries all over grown. The ivy and blackberries were taking over the rhododendrons and the oak tree. I worked for two days and barely unearthed any ground and managed to tweak my back in the process. Finally we got a sunny nice weekend a couple of weeks ago and Erik was motivated to help me clean up the front yard. We worked all weekend removing ground cover and leveling the yard but still did not finish. and our yard debris can was overflowing. We decided to do the rest later. The next Saturday we were out there cleaning up the yard and removing ground cover again. I noticed that around the oak tree and rhodie their were some bare twigs sticking up. I didn't know what type of plant they were so I was debating if I should keep them or remove them. I decided to clip their tops and remove them.

Saturday afternoon my left wrist started itching around where I had a scratch, then my elbow. That night I woke up with my arms on fire itching and burning. When I got up on Sunday I had red swollen blotches on both of my left and right arms. Erik and his dad both said that it was a rash and irritation and that it would go away soon. Instead it got progressively worse. It hurt to have anything touch my arms but they itched and burned and felt like they were on fire. Since I am a substitute it is hard for me to get a sub, especially the week before spring break and we had a field trip that Tuesday. My mom told me to go to urgent care. So Erik and I spent all evening in urgent care were I was told that I had poison oak and was put on Prednisone. And boy has it been one miserable week! The prednisone hurts my stomach and keeps me awake at night, benadryl makes me feel like I have been drugged, and the creams wear off in 30 mins. The teachers at school have been so helpful taking care of me and finding ointments to use to make me feel better. All I can say is thank God for spring break! I don't know if I would have survived another week. I told my students that I had poison oak so that they wouldn't be alarmed when they saw how awful my arms looked, but they would forget and come up to me tapping my arms, which was extremely painful. Mid-week I started wearing short sleeves and that helped remind them not to touch me!

We thought that Erik had some how managed to escape the poison oak but on Wednesday night a ring around his glove line showed up. It didn't seem to be spreading so he just used the ointment that I had. He is not on Prednisone and his spots our not drying up very quickly. They are oozing and more are appearing now. Great! We've washed the towels twice, all of the sheets, our clothes, our tools, everything! We are hoping that his will go away on its own because he is too busy at work to leave to go to urgent care. The good news is our yard is going to look great I just never realized it was going to be this painful and difficult!

Removing all the grown cover

I never imagined poison oak to be growing in the front yard of a house in a subdivision in Salem!

Piles of what we removed
Treasures we found in the ivy! please note the two Gigi pets!

The beginning of a painful week!

Next weekend Erik and I are going to go tackle the yard again. This time we will be working on leveling and planting grass. I will take more pictures of the yard. I can't wait to plan my native/ shade garden with the help of my mom!