Clearing Brush and the Joy of Poison Oak

The day Pumpkin was with me, I was working on clearing brush from our gravel road to a huge pine tree that towers over everything nearby. There were some manzanita and madrone trees to free from the brush crowding around them, and of course, I also spotted the telltale poison oak "feeder" vine/roots that were leafless but still covered with oils to avoid. I do my best to carefully yank out what I can without getting oil on my skin, but I'm not always successful. As I progressed, I saw that one of the manzanitas was growing out of the same spot as a large scrub brush, and it took time to remove the brush and leave the tree. All the trees needed to be pruned and cleaned up too, and it take a fair amount of time to get rid of the dead twigs and branches. I managed to scratch myself a number of times on the sharp places where I broke or cut branches off, but I figured it would be no big deal, since there wasn't poison oak there.

Yeah, right. Not sure how oil got into some of my scratches, but it did. Although I washed all of my scratches very carefully, some of them began to tingle and itch after a few hours, and the next day I could see that I had poison oak here and there on a few scratches and oh joy, my cheek too! YAY!! *grumble* Totally annoying.

Thankfully, about two years ago I found a way to deal with itching that really works! I don't know about you, but Calomine lotion or other anti-itch creams never really work for me. But you know what DOES work? Water. Seriously! The trick is to heat the water so it's almost too hot to touch. Run the water over the itchy place--first it will itch really intensely as histomines rush to the area, and then they'll flush away and the itch will be gone for hours! It REALLY WORKS! However, be careful if you want to use this technique for relieving certain itches: if you are suffering from hives, hot water will exacerbate the condition. I know because I tried it once and I was MISERABLE until the hives subsided with time and freezing cold water on contact. Hot water treatment also works great on wasp and hornet stings...lol...I wish I didn't know that! Country living is so much fun sometimes!!

This is the group of manzanita trees I cleaned up and pruned. Believe it or not, they were barely visible when I began "freeing them" from the scrub brush that surrounded them and in one case, shared root space. The trees were also covered with pine needles!

This is the huge pine tree that was surrounded by scrub brush. And the basset hound nosing around is Moosie, one of our three dogs. Steve came down to collect me and Pumpkin at the end of the day and brought our dogs down with him.