The Dandelion Wars

Okay, let me start by confessing that I have come to admire the dandelion. I'll even admit to a small bit of affection for the little yellow flowers.

This probably needs some explanation, especially for all of you who wage the annual war on dandelions. All my life I saw only the small, scruffy dandelions that grew in California. Now to say they were ugly would have been too complimentary.

When I moved to Montana three years ago, I was taken with the vast quantities of beautiful yellow flowers that seemed to grow everywhere. They were magnificent! Brilliantly yellow with heads the size of silver dollars and as full as Mums growing in 12 to 18 inch high clumps. They were absolutely stunning and I was absolutely stunned to find that these gorgeous flowers were dandelions!

I couldn't believe it, these beautiful flowers were weeds??? That is when the dandelion wars began. First battle: Campaign One: name brand weed killer. There were several problems with this plan. Since our battlefield was the lawn, it was tough to apply the weed killer to only the dandelions without damaging some of the surrounding lawn. This created a large ugly area on the lawn. It also took the dandelions about 10-14 days to die so you had to look at a withering brown eyesore for days. Okay, the dandelions won Campaign One.

Campaign Two: I decided to try an all natural treatment I had read about. I hopefully thought this would solve the damaged lawn problem. This process involved pouring boiling water on the dandelions. Totally non-toxic and unfortunately totally ineffective. Besides, people thought I had lost my mind, out there hand watering dandelions. It's okay; I can see how they thought that, it was a little strange. Campaign Two taken by the dandelions.

By now, the war was on! Determined to annihilate these pesky weeds I started looking around to my neighbors to see how they were waging the war. Oh boy, this was an eye opener. Most of my neighbors did nothing but mow them down but one neighbor had a relatively dandelion free lawn. Ah ha! Now I just needed to find out his secret weapon, reconnaissance was called for.

I must sympathize with my poor neighbor. I stalked the poor man, waiting for him to show up in his yard. The day he did, I rocketed out the door, across yards and came to a panting halt in front of a very surprised man. I quickly explained my mission, no small talk here, the search for the ultimate dandelion weapon. He held up a finger and walked away without saying a word although I do believe I saw his shoulders shaking with laughter. I just stood there, hoping he was coming back.

He did, with the ultimate weapon casually held in his hand. I swear, I think there was a glow coming off this weapon, I even think the birds began to sing. But I'm getting carried away...back to the perfect weapon. It was the coolest weed puller I've ever seen. Black and lethal looking it had three tines on one end that you impaled the weed (in this case a dandelion) with by placing them over the weed and stepping on a foot peg. Then by pushing the puller at an angle toward the foot peg, the weed is pulled out, lift the puller up, release the peg and voila, your weed lays dying on the lawn surface.

This was all demonstrated by my neighbor, whom I think should go down in some kind of hall of fame, while standing upright and not even breaking a sweat. I quickly grilled him as to where he had gotten such a wonderful tool. I was so excited I ran home without even thanking him; I had to go back to do that, right after I got back from the hardware store with my new lethal weapon. Campaign Three and the dandelions were reduced to a shriveling lump of rubbish on my driveway.

Do you remember when I confessed that I admire dandelions? Well I still do, only in other people’s yards.

'Til next time,

Marilyn

Springtime in the Rockies

Yippee. I think "spring" is finally here. Right about now you are probably thinking I'm a little bit crazy but in truth I live in the Rockies and "spring" comes later here.

We always joke about springtime in the Rockies being an oxymoron because there really is no such thing. Tuesday we had a snow and ice storm with a low of twenty-five degrees and this weekend we will see the temperatures climb to seventy degrees. That is quite toasty here where fifty degrees is t-shirt weather.

Even though the weather will be so nice I am sticking to the rule: Don't plant anything until after Memorial Day. I made the mistake of not following that rule three years ago. After several weeks of mild weather I couldn't wait the five more days until Memorial Day and I did some heavy planting. Three days later I had a yard full of black plants following a several snow storm. It was definitely a sad day but I learned my lesson well.

This year I have planting woes for a different reason. I became inpatient for gardening season, as usual, and decided to plant some seedlings indoors. Not only did everything germinate extremely quickly but almost to 100%. Uh-oh, planting season was still several weeks away. I have had to re-pot my seedlings from their little peat pots to one gallon containers which necessitated putting up a six foot table to set them on. Oh my, what a mess.

It's all working out though. I'm at the countdown point. Now I get to start setting them to harden and get ready to plant. Of course there are still some below freezing nights in store (and possibly a snow storm) so in they will come at night.

I do see some green sprouts in my flowerbeds. Unfortunately, some of them are weeds. We wage a special war against the dandelions here in Montana. I'll have to write about them sometime because they deserve their own story.

Along with the green sprouts in the yard, I have made some great progress with the new website. There are still some glitches here and there (I view them as the weeds on my website) but nothing a little more work won't fix. Come on by and see the progress: http://ExtremeGardeners.com

Until next time,
Marilyn

My Yard Art

I like to think of my yard as a work in progress, ever evolving and hopefully, improving. One of my most enjoyable elements of my yard are the decorations I have scattered here and there. My yard art allows me to use my imagination and show my whimsical side. It also can serve a very practical purpose by filling in some bare looking spots that sometimes exist as you wait for your plantings to mature.

Let me tell you how I got so interested in decorating my flowerbeds. When we retired and moved, I decided to de-clutter my house and do away with most of my knick-knacks. After awhile I missed looking for something new and different. I decided that if I channeled that to my yard at least I wouldn’t have to dust anything! My yard art was born.

You can develop a theme or just be eclectic like I am. I have a friend who has nothing but birdhouses scattered throughout their yard and another who only has frog statuary. I tend to do little scenes such as a wagon filled with flowers and a duck fishing at an imitation pond. I have benches, lanterns and wind chimes as well as gargoyles scattered throughout my yard. I even used a brass headboard as a trellis, the five dollars I spent at a garage sale was a bargain and it looks and works just great. As soon as the weather allows I will once again set all of these out, probably in different locations, probably in different arrangements, just to keep it interesting.

The thing about yard art is that it is fun and easy. Look around in your garage and you’ll probably find several things to get started. Painting up the kids old play gardening set and arranging them in a flowerbed can be very eye-catching. Paint an old watering can and set it on an interesting rock in your flowerbed. Don’t forget your trees. It can be a nice surprise for visitors to your yard to find an interesting object suspended in your tree branches. The ideas only end with your imagination so get out there and have some fun!