Listening in at a local hardware store
(picture of dandelions here)
So I had to pick up some fuses at one of the hardware stores in town because we blew through all ours again and I picked up a little earthway grass/fertilizer/etc spreader while I was at it which I plan to use for cover crops. I thought folks might want to read the conversation I overheard:
Customer to employee, “Whats the best thing to kill dandelions?”
Employee, “Well…”
Other employee nearer to me, “POISON!”, then after some manaical laughter, “they are about the most annoying things ever.”
I think I will just file this under ‘we will have to agree to disagree’ and leave it at that because I can’t let the destructive culture that this language springs from make me upset. The reason I can’t is because I can’t do a whole lot about it AND it is everywhere I look. It is the dominant culture and it is why I ought to be a farmer.
02 May 2007 at 7:09 pm Permalink
I recently discovered something incredibly cool that is a much more planet-friendly way to dispose of dandelions, and it’s probably a lot more satisfying: The weedpopper (http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/04/14/frugality-in-practice-the-weedpopper/)
It almost makes me wish I had a yard so I could buy one and use it.
02 May 2007 at 9:18 pm Permalink
Clare has one of these tools.
But dandelions are neat, and we shouldn’t kill them. They are pretty, their leaves make good salads, their roots help support the digestive system (mainly liver and urinary tract), and their flowers can be made into wine!
Some day I’ll make dandelion wine. Some day.
03 May 2007 at 7:08 pm Permalink
Their flowers can also make pretty wreaths. Sometimes though, they grow in places that they really shouldn’t, like the middle of my parents’ vegetable garden. I’m totally for some in the lawn, at least to the point where you still have more green than yellow.
Last year my elderly neighbor tried to get me to borrow his ‘weed sprayer’ for my lawn. I respectfully declined, and told him I thought that a healthy lawn had a good mix of plants. I don’t think he agreed, but he didn’t push it any further.
05 May 2007 at 12:52 pm Permalink
Young dandelion greens were picked and eaten with all salad greens when I was a young girl your great and great-great grandmas sent me out to the inner boulevard of St Anthony Boulevard by grandma’s house to pick them for a meal