Every year you return. Every year we fight the same battle. I wish to keep my property and neighborhood free of your taint. You pollute this place and every year you bring more and more of your kind with you.
You detract from the neighborhood, you lower property values. You are a blight. Some of my idiot neighbors welcome you. Go and stay with them. Don’t darken my doorstep.
Each year I have tried to sterilze you. I’ve spread poisions on the ground before you arrive, hoping to prevent you from coming back and camping here. I’ve tried uprooting you, destroying your link to this place. I’ve guillotined you, ripped you to shreds, stomped on you, thrown you in the street and driven over your corpses. And still you return.
I’ve used chemicals to try to burn you out. At the suggestion of a friend, I’ve tried using matches to burn you out. I’ve tried covering you–shielding you from the sun in the hopes that you would whither and die. You won’t.
Your females are too fecund. For every ten of you I kill, a hundered are born.
And now, you’re back again. Despite my efforts, my planning, my labor, my hard work: you are back again.
I realize now that I cannot win. No matter what I do, you will return. Go ahead: spread out on my lawn. Enjoy your stay, but know that deep in the dark recesses of my soul, I hate you and wish death, torture and mutilation on you and your children and your children’s children. But I am tired and I will fight no more forever.
You may say what you will about the overuse of petrochemicals and herbicides in today’s society, but Ortho Weed-B-Gon rocks.
Get thou hence to Wally-Mart, O my friend Fenris. Give those honest tradesmen a modicum of gold, in exchange for a magic bottle, half a gallon in size, of Ortho Ready-To-Use Weed-B-Gon, complete with magical self-priming trigger spray gun with its easy-open nozzle and with eldritch hose attached. All hail the mighty Ortho, king of herbicides!
Bring it to thy dandelion infestation, on a beautiful sunny morning on which no rain is expected by the Druids for at least 24 hours, activate its magic powers by uttering the fell words, “Sic 'em!” and saunter around thy yard in a lordly manner, spraying direful doom to dandelions, one at a time. Feel free to chortle maliciously while doing this. I do.
(If you have 2 acres of dandelions rather than 20 square feet, get the hose-end gizmo instead, follow the instructions carefully, and let 'er rip.)
Or you could get rid of your great green monoculture lawn, which wastes space, time, money, and chemicals, and plant a nice flower garden. Or fruit trees, which might actually prove a source of income instead of an expense. Or a rock garden.
I disagree with Mercutio. Foul words do not a perfect rant make. Fenris has a great sense of dignity and fatalism here. He sounds like a Roman emperor with a Gothic horde outside the walls. I give it a solid 8.0.
Why is everyone always so down on dandelions? A monochromatic green lawn is the most boring thing you can do with a yard. Dandelions are colorful and pretty. They take no effort or maintenance to grow. The leaves are actually edible. And kids love to make wishes and blow the tops into the wind. Why waste time worrying about them, let alone spend money trying to fight with them? You’re right to have finally seen this, Fenris. Just enjoy them.
A) I have fruit trees. (Apple, apricot (yuk), plum and crabapple (makes good jelly!).
B) I have a <small> vegetable garden.
C) I have a berry patch.
D) I have a flower garden (the tulips are quite nice now.)
E) Next year, I intend to put in a rock garden in my back yard.
F) a “monoculture” lawn in front that’s about 30 paces across by ten paces deep.
The dandilions are under the fruit trees, in the vegetable garden, in the berry patch, in the flower gardem and in the yard. I suspect they’ll find a way to be in the rock garden, when it happens.
But hey! Thanks for the “More ecologically minded than thou” assumptions.
Here’s a second to Ms. Quacker’s idea…I would just add that a judicious (obviously don’t hit the good green stuff) use of Roundup (or said “store brand” equivalent) on the remaining yellow terrorists usually shuts 'em up good…
It’s too small for a wheat patch, too big for a sandbox and I think xerascapes put the “ugh” in “ugly”. The main reason I have the lawn is because I like the way the lawn looks. Not everything has to be “useful”. Sometimes “pretty” is enough.
In any event, nothing in either of your posts have anything to do with my hatred of dandilions, I’m perfectly happy to agree to disagree about yard aesthetics and get back to my rant.
By the way Nimune, thank you for seeing into my tortured soul and understanding my art. You have perfectly understood my feelings, thus, clearly you are a woman of wit, taste and sensitivity! (Although a 10.0 would’ve gotten you even more sucking-up! )
Fenris: I resent being called a woman of wit, taste, and sensitivity. If you want to call me a man of wit, taste, and sensitivity, well, you’ll only be marginally less incorrect.
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand on the lawn… Near them, in the grass,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and glitter of eye as cold as glass,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Wich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Fenrisdias, bane of dandilions:
look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, grassy yet bare
The golden heads of the dandilion bob and sway.
If you got lemons, make lemonade; If you got dandelions, make dandelion wine.
All due respect to the “nuke 'em with Weed-B-Gone” folks, I can’t help wondering if that’s not a contributing factor to the incredibly high incidence of cancers in pet dogs and cats…
When I moved to this home it had been abandoned for five years. Raccoons were living in what is now my computer room. The front lawn(and I use the term loosely) was mostly, you guessed it, Dandelions.
I got Roundup. I wore a nuclear contamination suit. I mixed the Roundup 1:4. It’s supposed to be mixed 1:10. I sprayed everything. I killed every piece of vegetation in the entire lawn. It took 20 gallons- I have a one acre front yard. I made sure there were no drinking water wells or pets who would come in contact with this substance first, so don’t flame me- I also checked with the local fish & game folks to make sure nothing running off my property would affect any local watercourses.
I tilled the entire front yard and raked out every concievable scrap of dead vegetation, roots, etc. Tilled it over a foot deep, thank you very much. Planted carefully mixed grass seed- Kentucky Blue, Creeping red Fescue, Zoysia, and annual rye for instant coverage.
It made for a lovely lawn. For one year. This spring, the dandelions were back in force. I give up too.
Once in a while I carefully dig up a plant and burn it to ash with an acetylene torch just for grins.
But I just mow the little bastards now. Having the opportunity to personally chop their little heads off every week is soothing to me.
)
