A Bucketful of Dandelions and the Weed Hound

Good morning, friends!

I don't know about you, but I just do not like dandelions.  Do you?  Yeah, their cute little faces are a pretty yellow, and when you hold them under your chin to see if you like butter (remember doing that when we were kids?), that yellow is so bright it reflects on your skin. Meadows full of them can be quite uplifting. But I'm just not that wild about them. They are quite deceiving.

I've tried to tolerate them.  Really I have!  Even to the point of adding their leaves to our salads.  Yuck!  Too bitter for my taste.  Hubby keeps telling me he's going to make some dandelion wine, but that remains to be seen...

Yesterday I was out on my big John Deere mower having a wonderful time in the sunshine - cutting nice, straight, even rows in the grass (that seems to grow by leaps and bounds overnight!). I would look around me at the beautiful green stripes that reminded me of a golf course and just revel in the feeling of a nicely manicured lawn.  Yeah, even out here in the country, I'm obsessed with a clean lawn.  (but that's another issue I'm working on...)

This morning I got up expecting to see that beautiful wide expanse of lawn greeting me, and as I looked out the kitchen window........DANDELIONS!  EVERYWHERE!  Big yellow heads mixed with white fuzzy ones poking up all over waving at me.  Mocking me. Scraggly, leggy, tall and ugly - all laughing.  Where in the world did they come from?!  Was there a weed party last night I was unaware of?  Did they creep over from the neighboring fields in the dark of night?

So since we like to keep things as organic as possible in our yard and gardens, I spent an hour or so with my little Weed Hound.  Ever of that? It's a great little gizmo that plucks out the weeds from your lawn and you don't even have to bend over.  Nice, huh?  You center it in the weed, push down with your foot, twist it, and out pops the weed!  You then whack the handle with your palm and the weed flies out into your bucket.  You can actually feel the dandelion being pulled from deep in the ground.  

The battle was on.  I attacked that yard like a maniac - pushing and whacking - pushing and whacking. Two bucketfuls later, I couldn't hear the dandelions laughing anymore.

Nice.

I'm happy.

Umm, that is, until word gets out in Dandelion World that there's vacancies in our yard now....

Happy weeding!  

~ Laurie