No tale to add, just really enjoyed your thread title. 
Wisteria too.
When we bought our house in Seattle several years ago, there was a massive wisteria vine growing up one corner of the 2-car carport. The ‘vine’ was 4" thick at the base, and almost completely covered the roof of the carport. Tendrils were starting to reach through the air into the lovely tree on our patio on one side, and tendrils had reached into the shrubs in my neighbors’ yard.
A friend’s mother, who happened to be a landscape architect, stopped by to visit one day. She took one look at the wisteria, and said “You need to tear that out - it’s going to have the roof off of your carport soon”. So a couple of weeks later, I spent several hours hacking down the plant. Sure enough, it had started to grow underneath the shingles, and several thick branches were working their way between the gutters and the carport’s fascia boards.
Shame, really; it was a gorgeous plant when in bloom.
Oh, God, I hate those fuckers with a passion. Good news is that painting glyphosate onto cut stumps WILL kill Tree-of-Heaven…eventually. I had a buddy out at UC Davis who did a fairly extensive set of trials aimed at Ailanthus control.
Y’know what makes Ailanthus extra-scary? Some infestations in the New World may be perfectly natural. Some botanists have hypothesized that Ailanthus seeds, as small as they are, are actually capable of being carried (and remain viable) by wind all the way across the Pacific. Somehow, the seeds can get into the jet stream. How that happens, I have no idea.
A tree grows in Brooklyn, but it’s a miserable, scrubby, invasive exotic bastard. 
That describes our sleepydick (another hyacinth) problem to a T. OK, I may have to make a couple of Roundup exceptions before I am able to bend this yard to my will.
Plant native wisteria! Yep, we have it here in North America. It’s unscented, which is no fun, but it’s better behaved.
With wisteria, you just have to hack it back beyond a reasonable level and prune it every year (or possibly more often). It’s a beautiful plant, and it’s totally worth the effort, but you have to keep your eye on it.
Man, I’d almost want to plant some of this, just so I could loudly and frequently proclaim every chance I got, “I’m heading out to the yard to whack off the old sleepydick!” 
I hope you’re up for a LOT of whackin’.
Wow. The only explosively growing plant in my yard is wandering jew. I ripped it out of one flowerbed this past weekend. That stuff was growing into the railroad ties! I’m sure I missed a few roots and stems.
I swear I will never plant any English Ivy! The jasmine I have seems easy enough to control.
Roundup will only slightly annoy ivy. Last year, it took us several successive applications of Roundup to the foliage and some work with an axe to get rid of the visible ivy. Now, we have to be vigilant and squirt every tiny green leaf popping out of the ground before it has a chance to take over again.
Doesn’t do any good to spray Roundup on dirt either, other than to enrich Monsanto as the stuff is rapidly neutralized by soil microbes on contact with dirt.
I’ve seen ivy bust its way through stucco walls and then poke its ugly head through the sheetrock INSIDE the house. They didn’t know it was there until they moved a dresser.
I do think my husband killed one or two largish stumps that way. We had one huge one we had to have removed professionaly (actually, I think it was several trees that grew together), and a couple middle-sized ones. The rest were all little things, but zillions of them, and all connected together underground. (Previous owners had no desire to do anything with the backyard, and just let the weeds all grow for a long time.) The worst thing is that with all that root system, you don’t want to put herbicide all over them, because it would have been literally our entire back yard. Who knows when anything would grow again? So, we just dug the fuckers up.
It wouldn’t surprise me…I’ve never seen a plant with such a will to live.
You got that right. I used to think it must be an exaggeration that a tree could grow in the crack of a sidewalk, but now I know it’s true.
As I said earlier, Ortho Bush-B-Gone is much, much more effective against ivy. Try that next time.
It is definitely now on my shopping list. Although it may be a concentration thing. Isn’t Bush-B-Gone a glyphosate herbicide too? That’s what Roundup is.
glypho-what? I have no idea. I just know that I went from a mountain of ivy to not seeing any in over ten years. Round-up is formulated for weeds, Bush-B-Gone for shrubs. Ivy is probably more shrub-like than weed-like.
Ah, I just looked it up. Brush B Gon is triclopyr. Entirely different. Thanks for the recommendation!
wow, I have azalea bushes all along the front of my house and now I have honeysuckle and some evil thorny vinegowing up through the azaleas. The proble is if i pull the vines up it causes them to split and grow fuller. It is making me crazy! I didnt want to spray Round up around for fear it will kill the azelaeas but this might work!
One afternoon is all it took for me to go from Environmentally Responsible Gardener to Raging Synthetic Herbicide Psychopath. I didn’t spray the stuff, but I painted every goddamn exotic plant I could get my fevered little mitts on. I painted as much sleepydick as I could find. I coated ivy leaves. Privet stumps and bushes (God, this stuff is my mortal enemy. It is destroying the woods of the Southeast, and my clueless neighbors have both sides of their yard planted in massive Chinese privet hedges. I have to pull it from my yard about every two weeks.) Shrub honeysuckle. Althea stumps. Monkey grass.
When I was finished, I stumbled back to the house, guilt-ridden and soaked with death.
Me: “I had to do it! You understand, don’t you?!”
My wife: “Yes, dear. You had to do it. Now come in and have some soup.”
I’m actually planning on planting some mint this year to try and fight off the ground ivy. Seriously. I’m gonna throw some chives in there too, while I’m at it. I figure they’re the only things I’ll actually use that are likely to give the ivy a decent fight.
Luckily, the patches we’re talking about are several rectangles of earth in an otherwise concrete back “yard”, so there’s only so far the mint or chives can go.
Hmm…you suppose if I made one of them catnip (a mint, with the voraciousness of a mint), I’ll attract neighborhood cats who might scare off the thieving squirrel who eats all my tomatoes? I’m so gonna try it!
And of course, now I’m having Poisoner’s Regret. The stuff I used was a concentrate of glyphosate and imazapyr, and I carefully painted the sleepydick with it, but now I’m (probably irrationally) terrified that I’ve hurt or killed the giant oak that overshadows the bed with the sleepydick. The weed patch was definitely within the dripline of the oak, but I didn’t spray. I painted. PLEASE tell me I haven’t just killed my favorite tree in the whole damn yard.
Fuck.
And I probably used no more than an ounce of the herbicide on that whole area. I’m freaking out over nothing, aren’t I?
I hope. 
Um, sleepydick is best pulled firmly but with constant pressure from the base of the plant. That’s the only way you can pull up the root (bulb). Sometimes repeated pulling is needed to achieve your goal.
I feel like I just had phone sex…
Ogre–I have had that guilt, too. You painted; you didn’t spray. I bet it’s fine. Once I get my flame thrower, I’ll let you know how that works. I am concerned that with it I’m not getting the roots, but am counting on the incineration to shock and kill.
My bane this year (besides the sleepdick) is the neighbor’s redbud seedlings. They are everywhere. I look forward to frying them, too. <rubs hands together with evil laugh>