Man at war

It’s a losing battle. We should have known that. We should have seen that it was a quagmire waiting to happen, but no, we decided we had to go to war against the dandelions on our lawn.

We’re now in the third year of the insurgency. When it first started I figured I’d be a real man and do things the old fashioned way, on my hands and knees. I waited till a day that it might be fairly damp and I took one of those weeding forks. The thing is, the special operations surgical strike is supposed to be the best tool a warrior has. But obviously, our intelligence must have been bad. There were way more of the noxious weeds than I had previously assumed.

And even though this bunker-busting method is supposed to be the best way to get them roots and all, I think that our action only served to fuel the insurgency. There were even more dandelions the next year, and in even more places on the property.

So, I was determined to turn up the heat. An all out aerial assault. I searched out the most powerful chemical weapons I could find. My intention was nothing short of shock and awe.

The thing about weed killers is that your hand is what dies after about an hour of spraying this deadly dose of dandy lion killing drink. After flying sorties over several square yards I’d try to switch hands, but may left hand would tire much quicker than the right did. And it’s quite a operation to put the trigger-gun into one hand without dropping the jug or tangling up the hose.

The thing about bombing missions is that there’s always collateral damage. Sure enough, within a week there was all kinds of bald spots on the lawn where the weed-be-dead-and-gone had taken out an inordinate amount of innocent civilian grass. If only there was a way to eliminate the belligerent yellow terrorist invaders without sacrificing the natives.

Sure enough, the dandelions only increased their numbers.

Sometimes the only way to handle a situation is to cover it up or draw attention away from it. So I’d try to mow more often to that the weeds were still there, but their heads were cut off so that hopefully, from a distance, no one would notice that they weren’t just grass.

This year I have had to escalate. I came up with a three tiered strategy; rapid-grow grass seed on the bare areas, weed-and-feed-speckle-things fertilizer/weed killer, and another round of the spray (that now comes in a supposedly more effective and more localized foam). No more Mr. Nice guy, I figured.

Unfortunately, all the strategy and the best tactics in the world may not get the job done without good logistics. When I went to get supplies at the store, I was dismayed by the cost of lawn care products. The largest bag of the best name brand fertilizer was well over $20, so were the most reputable brands of grass seed. Here I’d just spent nearly $40 on fuel. What’s more the directions on the grass seed called for a roto-tiller. What a mess that would make of my lawn to tear up single square yards of bare spot. Not that I own a tiller in the first place.

But you don’t go to war with the tools you wish you had, you go to war with the tools you have. So I bought smaller sizes of off-brand products, and one of those little plastic hand-cranked fertilizer broadcasting (sowing?) thing-a-ma-bobs and I returned to the theatre of combat.

That was before the rains came. Reconnaissance is inconclusive as to the effectiveness of our latest campaign. If this didn’t take I suppose we’ll just have to pour more money into the ongoing war. Maybe we’ll even have to escalate again next year and contract mercenaries to carry out the battle instead of doing it ourselves.

“Daddy why don’t you like dandelions?” my girls ask me.

“Well, we just don’t like weeds, they make our yard look yucky, so I keep trying to get rid of them,” I explain.

“But dandelions aren’t weeds, they’re flowers,” our 4 year old tells me, “I think they’re CUTE!”

Many is the bouquet she’s picked for her mother or I that we’ve politely placed in a jelly jar vase on the kitchen counter. I guess we’ve got a lot of educating to do to win over the hearts and minds of these protesters.