Not a weed, but my nemesis for 2009 was stinkhorn fungus. I would gladly, gladly, take any of the aforementioned weeds in exchange for it. It's a perverted-looking fungus that grows from little eggs beneath the soil, and it is damn near impossible to eradicate. Just when you think you've dug it all out, it pops up three feet away. This was happening in an area right by my front door, and when they call it stinkhorn, they're not kidding. The smell is like nothing else. My mom, God bless her, came over one day while I was at work and really went at it hard in that area, digging up hundreds of little eggs and treating with vinegar and baking soda. I didn't see anymore after that. I pray that it's gone. Horrible!

Bindweed is nasty and makes my blood boil. As a farmer I have become very dissatisfied with all the chemicals we use and even then we do not eradicate, only temporarily control. There should be holistic, natural ways to deal with this. Older farmers tell me they used salt to sterilize the soil. Chemicals can sterilize and do this. Of course we want to grow things, not kill them and look at bare ground. I also seen a study that said copper could do this. I would like to put some copper or salt 2 foot down into the soil through a pipe to see if that would work. This is where the roots could absorb this. Do roots need a surfactant like we use when we spray the leaves with chemicals? We have to kill the roots. Any suggestions? Desperate farmer

Rosie, I can try layering some for you. I is a hard vine to find. Mine is still in the pot, and I'll see what I can do. Never propagated this one before, but it seems that layering should work for this type of vine. Have you seen the new tri-colored leaf confederate jasmine? It is also hard to find, but the leaves are GORGEOUS! girlgroupgirl

It is horribly invasive. The bush type that Bon mentioned get tree-sized along fencerows that aren't maintained by their owners. I hate it. We leave it alone deep in the woods where we rarely venture since some wildlife eat the berries, but kill it when it tries to creep out of the woods and into the garden which sits about 8' south of our woodland's edge. In a dry year it just holds its own and sits there. In a wet year it tries to spread very aggressively and we have to tackle it repeatedly. I had a friend who once became very ill from inhaling the smoke from a burning brush pile that contained poison ivy vines. Apparently the poison ivy oil spores traveled on the air and got into her lungs, giving her an internal case of poison ivy. She also had it all over her body at the same time. That was about as sick as I've ever seen anybody get from poison ivy. Only you can decide if you want to remove it or let it be. Sometimes I think people have more trouble removing it than just leaving it alone---if it is far enough away from the house that they can leave it alone. I have a friend who is so allergic to it that she practically breaks out in a rash if she just looks at poison ivy. I am glad no one in your family appears to be that sensitive to the poison ivy. We have poison ivy vines climbing tree trunks in our woodland where the vines are as big around as my wrist. There's no way I am venturing into the woodland to try to pull down, cut down or otherwise remove poison ivy that size. It can stay there forever as far as I am concerned.