DON’T MALIGN THE DANDELION!

I’m sitting at the dining room table, looking out the huge window like a contented kitty, and I’ve noticed a difference between our yard and our neighbors across the street.  Our yard has lots of cheerful, bright yellow dandelions.  Theirs doesn’t.  That’s probably by design; they may have sprayed herbicide to kill dandelions.  I never understood that.  Why would anyone want to kill them?  They’re beautiful.  They’re like little happy faces in the yard.  Why kill them?

Dandelions aren’t only beautiful.  They’re useful, too.  You can make dandelion wine with them, and you can use the leaves early in the season as salad greens or you can cook them.  I remember collecting dandelion greens once for my grandmother.  Why poison the yard to kill them and the other useful weeds?  Who wants a uniformly green, boring lawn?  How dull!  We have a smorgasbord in nature.  Even though I don’t take advantage of it, I still like knowing it’s there.  In case of dire emergency, I could harvest dandelion greens, plantain, and chicory roots.  I’m not a survivalist or prepper per se, but I do like the idea of being able to live off the land if I had to.  It must be the farmer’s daughter in me.  I have happy memories of chewing on wild red clover for its sweetness, smelling the wild spearmint that grew by the big tree in our yard, and going to Michigan one year to hunt wild mushrooms.   I grew up with the idea of wild plants (aka “weeds”) as useful and fun.

So, here’s my advice: Let the dandelions live.  Let the other weeds live, too.  You’ll have a more beautiful and colorful yard,  you’ll save yourself a lot of work, and you’ll spare the environment toxins that are bad not only for plants, but also for us and for all animals.  Why do you think they put up those little flags warning you not to walk on grass that’s been recently sprayed with herbicides? A former neighbor of mine sprayed his yard and his dog was poisoned and died.

In fact, we’ve gotten too good at killing weeds.  Part of the reason that the monarch butterfly is threatened is that we’ve killed so much milkweed, the only food that monarch butterfly caterpillars can eat, that their numbers have decreased dramatically.  They were very common, ubiquitous even, when I was a child.  I didn’t even like monarch butterflies that much when I was a kid because they were so common that seeing one was nothing special.  I’d get excited to see the other, less common and differently colored butterflies.  Now I’m thrilled to see a monarch butterfly.  I probably saw no more than 15 or 20 all last year.  Now I’m ashamed that I didn’t appreciate them when I was younger.

We humans need to learn that when we pull at one thread in the web of life that it affects everything connected to that thread, and the threads connected to that thread, and down the line.  Let’s stop trying to control everything.  Let’s appreciate all of nature’s diverse beauty and the wonderful things we can do if we learn to work with nature.  If you’re interested in learning about edible weeds, check out Edible Wild Food and The Balance. Now, get out there and explore your yard or the nearest park.  What do you see that is edible?  What do you see that is beautiful?  Let’s work together to preserve it.  Enjoy!