Dandelions

Arriving back in Canada last week, I was unpleasantly surprised to see the proliferation of dandelions just about everywhere.  It wasn't this bad in the States so I have to believe that the restrictions in Canada against many weed killing chemicals is more stringent than in the States.


On one hand, I understand that it isn't good to saturate our atmosphere with all these chemicals but, on the other hand,  the sight of masses of dandelions isn't nice, either.  I failed to weed my flower gardens last summer because of "the lip" and dandelions took hold in a darned big way.  The other day I carefully climbed into my front garden, worrying all the while about twisting my knee, and pulled out an armful of the healthiest dandelions you ever saw.  I haven't ventured into the backyard yet to do any work but I can see lots of huge dandelions happily growing in the lawn back there.


Could it be that this is the time to just accept an ugly lawn?  Were we all a little too obsessed before with growing the perfect, weedless lawn?  This is going to take a huge attitude adjustment on the part of gardeners everywhere but I suppose it can be done.


Even if we tried our best to keep dandelions out of our grass, it would be impossible to keep the airborne spores from landing there and seeding themselves.  From the large expanses of dandelion covered land I've seen (mainly city property), we're all in for an invasion of the little devils.