Huge pods? OMG, that's body-snatcher ivy! Move out immediately!!

That isn't ivy. It may be a type of squash. I have a plant which spread like wildfire and it has "pods," that look that way, but become huge white flowers. Yours could even be full of seeds for more of the same, which is why your yard is full. Wait and see what they become by October, or have someone from a local nursery come over- or cut a branch with the leaves and a pod, and go to the nursery, and they can identify it. You'd be surprised how helpful small family owned nurseries will be. If you don't like them, pull them out by the roots.

It is a type of milkweed, sometimes called honeyvine. Feeds monarch butterflies.
Cynanchum laeve
http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=CYLA

By the way, you do have regular English ivy in there too. It is a good idea to wear gloves and long sleeves when pulling any plants. I learned the hard way that English ivy can cause a skin reaction in some people similar to poison ivy.

Looks more like a moonflower vine. Big white blooms followed by pods with seeds.

Yep, that's milkweed. We have lots of it in my neighborhood. I remember my aunt telling me you could eat the raw, green pods, and they taste like green peppers... but I didn't like green peppers, and never had the urge to bite into one. In the fall they dry out and turn thin and brown, and then they open to blow out little seeds each on a puff of white silky cotton-stuff!

I agree on milkweed. Moonflower pods look twisted. TheI flowers open in a spiral movement.

Cut open a pod to confirm.

This stuff will take over and it's hard to pull up. It breaks off underground and comes up again double. Nip it in the bud asap! It is indeed a member of the Asclepias (milkweed) family. One common name is climbing milkweed vine. Another is honeyvine milkweed. The scientific name is Cynanchum laeve but some still call it by its older scientific name Ampelamus albidus.

Ha! I wish we could "like" comments on here. STATIONERYFIEND... that exactly what I was thinking. lol

Single point leaves - milkweed. And yes, it's basically a weed. Five point leaves - most likely, english ivy.

http://www.walterreeves.com/gardening-q-and-a/climbing-milkweed-vine-honeyvine/

Ooh yuck, milkweed. Get rid of it as soon as you can. That stuff is crazy invasive. It will kill off everything around it and go looking for more. Those pods contain these fluffy seeds that will spread everywhere.

Aw, poor weeds :(

I take care to leave some patches of milkweed alone as it is the only plant that Monarch butterflies eat, the entire life cycle of Monarchs depend on milkweed. You gotta love those symbiotic relationships!

Yank it out where it's not welcome & be vigilant about 'volunteers' . Then find a spot where it IS welcome, leave it be & remove the pods as they form. Done and done and the monarchs are happy as well. (and btw-just fyi-the term 'ivy' is not synomymous with 'vine' contrary to popular belief:)

Strange, the vine itself looks like wild morning glory (the leaves do not look like the leaves of milkweed I saw in google images), but that pod may be a milkweed pod as people are saying. It's definitely not ivy, though ivy is present, in the background, under the morning glory in the second photo. Morning glory is an invasive, and you can try yanking it out, but it'll just grow back. You have to get it out BY THE ROOT. Good luck with that. Used judiciously paint (herbicide) can help. Ivy is also an invasive, by the way, and will smother other plants.

SMOKEDPAPRIKACHICA, while milkweed is the host plant for monarch caterpillars, there are a lot of species of milkweed! JEANJ seems to know her stuff, so I'd look to see if that particular milkweed species is native or invasive in Shelly's area - and then if necessary eradicate the invasive and replace with native milkweeds! The cooperative extension office should be glad to help out.

Not exactly a liability, it is a native species and feeds important pollinators like bees and butterflies. You could keep it at bay by yanking and trimming it out where it's not wanted. But pulling it all out to replace with another plant (most landscaping plants used in the USA are "exotics" and have very little bearing on the local wildlife) would be a travesty.

MILKWEED

This is what I know as milkweed. http://www.wildfoods.info/wildfoods/milkweed.html

But if you do a Google image search, it confirms that the picture above is milkweed VINE, which, apparently, monarchs eat as well. It also says these are perennial vines, so getting rid of them may not be easy!

If you want to maintain plants for monarch butterflies but not have the invasive vine, you could try butterfly weed (not to be confused with butterfly bush.) Butterfly weed is an orange flowered milkweed plant you can sometimes buy at nurseries and wildflower places, and it's a pretty garden flower the butterflies like to chow down on, as well.

Woot for the pollinators!

Milkweed needs a better marketing strategy... instead of instead of "milkweed" it should have been named "monarch plant"!

The fascinating thing to me about milkweed -- and the viney kind is new to me-- is that it's the ONLY thing that monarch caterpillars will eat. Its existence allows them to migrate -- and from what I understand, they lay eggs & raise caterpillars in the middle of the migration path so the US needs it everywhere.
My 5yo just found a dead monarch butterfly and has it on the kitchen table...so very sad.

I did some more looking, and I think this is clearly in the Swallowwort family (which are milkweeds), possibly Cynanchum laeve (which is native to the Eastern US). However, there are a number of other possibilities, some of which are quite invasive.

Check out http://www.invasive.org/species/vines.cfm and scroll down to the Cynanchums to see if it matches any of those descriptions! If not, and it is laeve, http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=CYLA, it is native and OK if you want to keep it.