by Dawn Smith-Pfeifer, NDFB Director of Content and Communications
The green grass, the budding trees, the smell of fresh dirt, the songs of robins and the scurrying bunnies in the backyard all bring a sense of hope to my winter-weary soul.
We didn’t have much for a winter, and for that I am incredibly grateful. We did have a lot of fog, though, and I’m starting to believe the old wives’ tale my mother-in-law swore by – 90 days after fog expect rain. Most of January was foggy and most of April was rainy. (February started out foggy too, because I was driving in extremely dense fog to and from a meeting in Fargo at the beginning of February and May started out rainy.)
Getting back to the title of this missive: I love spring, BUT I don’t love those ubiquitous yellow lawn invaders.
Dandelions.
I no longer have sweet littles to pick the bright yellow weeds in bunches and bring to me with huge smiles and announce, “I picked you these pretty flowers!”
The mom in me was happy to get a bouquet of dandelions. The gardener in me was half happy, half dejected because while these particular dandelions would not be spreading their seeds, there were many more out there that would.
When you think about it, what an ingenious creation. Yellow “flowers” (and I use that term with trepidation) turn into seeds with little helicopter-like protuberances to be lifted up and dispersed in the wind. Heaven knows we have plenty of that.
While many people look at the sea of yellow and shrug with a “this too shall pass” mentality, in our yard, we drop EVERYTHING with the first speck of yellow. With SWAT-like precision, we put a dandelion eradication battle plan into play.
We check the forecast. We plot the time and temperature for the best “kill” rate, and we attack, no holds barred. And then it rains more than our weather apps forecasted, overnight lows get colder than expected and we watch and hope for the best.
Oh, some shrivel and die. Others look like they got a shot of adrenaline and suddenly are producing eleventy-nine buds. So, each day, I am relegated to patrolling the yard, spray wand in one hand, plastic bag in another to pluck and spray individual hangers-on and new sprouts that didn’t get the “not in THIS yard” memo.
It’s a mind-numbing task and I dread it. Especially when I look at the nearby grass I so carefully planted and nurtured last summer, only to see it dead, and nearby dandelions thumbing their petals at my brown, lifeless grass.
Good thing I’m not a farmer. We’d starve!
myndfblife 