I’ve been walking around in the one of the quintessential understory dwellers, English Ivy. Its resilience to the countless environmental factors that it is subjected to makes you want to commend it for being so hearty. Unfortunately, English Ivy and I are not on great terms. When I was growing up, I had a lot of it in my backyard. I also was very into playing sports that used small balls, such as lacrosse and baseball. Whenever I would have friends over, or if I was just messing around by myself, a handful of the balls that I would be using would always seem to find their way into the ivy’s black hole. No matter how hard I looked, and no matter how much ivy I whacked with my stick, the Ivy would not surrender the balls. Some years later, teh ivy was taken out of my backyard because we needed to make room for a fence and a swimming pool. I was very excited for this day to come, because I knew that when they were taking out the ivy, which could uncover many lost items of mine. When I got home form school on that day, I was very excited to see the loot. When I asked my mom how many balls the found, she said four. Four? I had lost close to four hundred in there over the years. I walked outside and just stared at the bare area where the ivy used to be. There were a couple strips of vines laying on the ground, and I couldn’t help but feel that that were having the time of their lives watching me sit there in misery. I have never forgotten this incident, and I made a promise to those small bits of vine, that I would get even someday.