“Make no mistake: the weeds will win; nature bats last.” Robert M. Pyle
There has been wall-to-wall media coverage on the death of Usama Bin Laden, but there is another form of terrorism affecting this country that almost never gets discussed. It affects homeowners everywhere and is costing us billions of dollars every year, dollars that could go into taxes to buy banks and car companies. We’re talking about a recent surge in dandelions. If you live in a city this still affects you since dandelions can even grow in the cracks of a sidewalk.
Laugh if you will, but these innocent-looking little weeds are the scourge of every lawn, golf course and park in the United States. They are the cockroaches of the plant kingdom. If there’s a drought they turn brown and go dormant, then return with friends later on. If there’s too much rain, they multiply faster than rabbits on Viagra.
Dandelions have many allies and have banded together with weeds of many different species, all intent on destroying and taking over well-groomed plots of grass in every corner of the country.
Chemical companies produce prodigious amounts of weed killer every year, but that only seems to hold back the inevitable on a temporary basis. Some homeowners try to deal with the little terrorists on their own and often end up hospitalized from exhaustion or sun stroke. We’ve seen them try all sorts of things to combat dandelions, from chemical sprays to blow torches to simply getting on hands and knees and plucking them out one by one. Obviously some people have a lot more time on their hands than others.
The agricultural equivalent of the Navy Seals is a highly trained and deadly (to weeds) ops group called Chemgrass that can quietly slip into an area midday and blanket a lawn, in napalm-like fashion, with a chemical cocktail that if misused could eliminate all plant life as we know it. Except for dandelions. They have learned to adapt and change faster than our chemists can devise new poisons for them.
Dandelions have impacted our entire society in ways we never thought possible. It’s difficult to discuss the problem openly because we can’t just say “we need to kill weeds” (in public). We have to be very specific to note that these are extremist weeds and don’t represent all forms of wild grasses and leafy plants, many of which contribute to our environment and help keep vegans alive. There have been many lively debates on talk shows when someone says “I have a weed problem” and other guests walk off because they believe the speaker is a bigot or weedist.
The other problem in trying to destroy these pests is that they are often aided and abetted by children, who collect their flowery heads for their mothers or blow on them when they are in pollen form. This, of course, just spreads their seeds far and wide and only increases their numbers. Lawmakers are working on restrictions for children but until then we have to rely on pat downs and pocket checks when they come in the house.
The same effect comes from mowing or weed whacking. While a homeowner might take great satisfaction in seeing the heads of evil dandelions fall like aristocrats on an exceptionally busy day of the French Revolution, that also tends to just spread them around and create more plants.
We were given a clue as to what might happen to the human race from the old movie about the pod people. As much as that seems like a silly science fiction movie, dandelions are in fact capable of ultimately taking over this planet with help from other “extremist” weeds. Whether we like the fact or not, mankind and the quest for a perfect lawn is the only thing preventing this entire planet from becoming one giant, leafy ground cover.
Behind all this is one single dandelion leader, Useema Bin Gharden, believed to be protected by a secret sect of monks high in the Himalayas. This group believes that animal life despoils the planet and that the dandelion is the one true way to return the world to a pure and pristine state. Apparently they have not yet realized that would mean their own demise as well.
We also have it on good authority that the Chemgrass Black Ops unit may be close to finding and destroying Bin Gharden. We certainly wish them well, but would remind everyone that sometimes taking out one dandelion can spawn many more in its place.
Note: According to Hoover’s there are about 90,000 major landscaping services in the United States today with a combined annual revenue of around $50 billion. Including smaller lawn care companies, the number of services jumps to over 350,000 with nearly 800,000 employees total. Most homeowners consider lawn care a discretionary cost that is often one of their first budget items to be cut during economic downturns. Dandelions love recessions.
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