I'm having the house exterior painted in preparation for renting it out. We once had a healthy crop of English ivy on it, and after removing it, it left many old tendrils in the stucco that I've always found impossible to remove, so persistent are the roots. I've tried power washing, to little avail, and thought that it would be a long and tedious job with a wire brush, perhaps combined with some sort of acid. I even asked on a home repair newsgroup, but no one had any obvious easy solution.

But I'm sitting here watching the painters prep the house, and they're doing what's obvious in retrospect. They fired up a little propane torch, and simply burn them off, followed by brushing off the ashes. Why didn't I think of that?

Don't feel bad, that technique almost certainly embodies the collected wisdom of LOTS of failed attempts by painters to remove them adequately.

What might have taken lots of clever people lots of trial and error (and the invention and commoditization of the portable propane torch!) will hit upon some near-optimal solution. That right there puts the finger on the main argument behind conservative politics: I might not know WHY something weirdly idiosyncratic is done in such and such a field of human activity, but there's a damned good chance it's practitioners didn't get there by accident, and those in favor of gross social engineering meddle at their peril.

I guess that where they get the phrase, 'Tricks of the Trade'

Just like I learned from working in a car repair shop that despite the tools sections of hardware stores being full of various types of implements that seperate or pull suspension parts away from the subframe. Often the best tool to use is just a heavy hammer and hitting specifics points on a knuckle to break the parts free. Similar in that the best way to press an axe head onto a new axe handle is to tap the handle end sharply against the ground instead of hammering on the axe head itself.

We have a lot of ivy. I've even swung on some of it, Tarzan style. Every now and then we have to chop it out of any trees we want to keep alive (if you think plants are peaceful, just watch ivy go to work on a tree) and out of fencework before it is destroyed.

You want fun? Try chopping 3 1/2 inch thick ivy trunks weaving in and out of decorative concrete block fencing, without breaking the blocks or pulling them out of the (now old) mortar. Understand that the trunk FITS ITSELF to the holes, so on either side of the block it is 3 1/2 inch, but perfectly fits the holes in the block.

We finally found that the easiest method was to wait six months for the trunk fragments to dry then chop them out with a dry chisel. Fun, fun, fun!

It's zee attack of zee mutant vines! ! !!!

very few things in life can't be solved with either a propane torch or sawz-all. ;)

What? No permit from the LA County Air Quality Control Board required?

Bushitler savaging environmental regulation again, no doubt.