Nature vs. Culture at Sadie’s Eleven

It’s interesting, our perception of weeds.  What makes a plant a weed? Hmmm, I think it’s all in our heads.  We buy into a cultural norm that says one plant, like a rose, is desirable and beautiful, and another plant, like a dandelion, is undesirable and therefore ugly.

This is true for more than just plants too.  My long time mentor, Dennis Bruce, is fond of saying: “The only difference between a flower and a weed is whose garden it’s in.” He’s been telling me that for years.  It’s one of the reasons I chose to grow my career in my own garden instead of in someone else’s.

None of this philosophical pondering, however, is helping us with the issue of weeds at Sadie’s Eleven.  The property has beautiful sweeping lawns  spreading out from every aspect of the house.  The actual lawn, although large by suburban standards, is still only a fraction of the 10.8 acre lot it’s sitting on.  Now that Dennis has put the house up for sale, we have to figure what to do about the weeds.

Dennis: The flower beds look terrible.  They are full of onion grass and dandelions.  The lawn people were suppose to get rid of the weeds before they put on the new mulch.

Me: Well there’s not much we can do at this point except pull them out by hand.  It would be easier if we a had the right kind of tool.  I had one that I used when I was a kid – my dad wanted to make sure we dug out the dandelion roots.

Dennis: What did it look like?

Me: It had a wooden handle and a straight metal shaft with a flat chisel like end with a “v” cut into the blade to catch the root and lift the whole thing out.

Dennis goes trotting off into the kitchen and I follow along behind.  He opens one of the deep drawers, rummages around and pulls out exactly the tool I described . . .  with the tag from the store still dangling from the handle.

Dennis: I have one!

Me: Why, yes you do! Isn’t that amazing!

Pulling the weeds from the mulched beds with this cool new tool is pretty easy, but then I start obsessing over clusters of  dandelions around the flagstone paths at the front of the house.  I discover a big container of Round-Up in the shed and decide this is just what is needed.

Dennis: So how is it coming with the weeds?

Me: I’ve been spraying them.

Dennis: The ones in the flower beds?

Me: No, I’m pulling those out.  I’m spraying the ones around the paths in the yard.

Dennis: You’ll kill the grass! Don’t spray the ones in the yard – I’ll end up with brown spots all over the lawn.

Me: I’m not spraying the grass, I’m spraying the dandelions at their center!  Trust me, I know what I’m doing.  You will not have brown spots.

Dennis: Round-Up kills everything, not just the dandelions.  You can’t control the dandelions in the yard out here in the country.  I’ve tried and it’s just something that you have to live with.

Shortly after this conversation, an intense but brief rain shower blew through the area with no warning.  It’s was over in 10 minutes and the sun came back out and stayed out for the rest of the day.  Meanwhile, I’m looking at the back of the Round-up container about the effect of rain on the spray.  Supposedly it’s weatherproof within a matter of minutes after spraying.  We’ll see.  I’m currently holding my breath about brown spots on the lawn!

That brief moment of panic about the rain brought home to me the sometimes ridiculous lengths to which we are willing to go in order make our world conform to our idea of beauty. The toxic chemicals we have poured on the ground, that swirl around in our water supply and in the air we breathe, all to eradicate some culturally unworthy plant matter? What is it about humans that we have this deep seated need to control everything?  I’m waging war on some tiny little cheerful yellow flower using weapons of mass destruction!  And what else am I destroying in the process?

I’ve decided to give up my quest to rid the lawn of dandelions.  The next owners can decide if they want to fight that battle or make up their minds that dandelions are the new “roses” of the 21st century!