vines on telephone poles

My son in law asked me to post his plea: please don't plant vines on the telephone poles in your yard, and if a weed vine gets started, please carefully cut it off at the ground. While it looks pretty, repair men have a terrible time climbing and getting stung. Their safety depends on a clean pole. Thank you!

Cathy,

Thanks for posting that. I have an aristolochia elegans vine that decided to keep climbing...it latched onto a pole on the other side of my fence and worked itself all the way to the top. I hated to cut it back because this vine is the larval host for the polydamas butterfly but when it started to cover the transformer I figured I best cut it back - didn't want it to cause a short or something that would blow the transformer. Never have seen anyone working on the poles out here...but it is good to know we should keep those poles vine free. Am sure bees and wasps could make a nest way up there...not a good thing for a repairman!!!

Thanks again...am glad I cut my back a few weeks ago. Guess I should have never let it get out of hand in the first place :o)

~ Cat

That is one impressive vine! You do grow things bigger in TX. Thanks, Cathy

I've thought about that sort of thing. So many poles are out in the wild that I'm sure that vines probably are responsible for some power outages around here, especially combined with severe storms. If ivy can pull down a black locust tree, I bet it can a pole as well.

Poor workers here have to contend with the himalayan blackberries, too. They hurt. The power company contracts with a tree company to annually survey the lines and cut around the poles.

In a neighborhood near where I used to live, someone had a wisteria that had grown up and out onto the electrical wires themselves--every time I drove underneath there I tried to drive quickly because I know someday the wisteria is going to pull those wires down!

Scary, eh? I do the same thing, ecrane. There's a place on one of the roads here that trees fall regularly during storms...I hussle...also major slide areas. I wonder if it's better to go slower or faster in those situations, see it coming and outmanouver or predict its fall and beat it. Neither are rational, are they?

No, neither one is rational--you're pretty much equally likely to get hit either way! My (not necessarily logical) rationale is that if you're going fast, then you're under it for a fraction of a second less time, so therefore that reduces the chances that it'll land on you! But you've got a good point about being able to see it an maneuver around it if you're going slower. Probably doesn't make a difference either way--if it's going to get you it's going to get you!

yep. If that power line does come down on you, stay in the car!
I'm wierd - I think of possible disasters as I drive and plan how I'd handle them, like driving my way down a cliff if I went over (there are LOTS of them here) instead of covering my head and hiding. Maybe then I could miss a tree and land in water -or something...course, if I'm airborne, it would be hard to miss the tops of trees. Or when skidding on ice, consider where would be the softer place to hit. I have an overactive imagination.

I sometimes do the same thing--like when I'm driving across one of the bridges, I think about how I would work my way out of the car and swim to shore if the bridge collapsed and I wound up in the Bay! Of course if something like that actually happened I'm sure I would totally panic, do everything wrong, and end up dead!

I hate when I'm stuck under an overpass and can hear big trucks overhead. shudder....

oh yes...I am not found of that sound; ecrane, I know some of the bridges you refer to, and of course, my mind immediately went to the Loma Prieta quake.

Sorry your thread took such a detour, cathy4, but...it keeps it bumped so the original message gets seen. :-)

LOL, my life is a detour, who would want to take the same road every day?

My feeling exactly! Maybe that can be my excuse for being a lousy housekeeper - who wants to do the same ol' thing over and over ('course, there are a number of unavoidable activities that I feel the same way about....been there, done that).