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