Weed Pullers

Under the concrete benches,
Hacking at black hairy roots,--
Those lewd monkey-tails hanging from drainholes,--
Digging into the soft rubble underneath,
Webs and weeds,
Grubs and snails and sharp sticks,
Or yanking tough fern-shapes,
Coiled green and thick, like dripping smilax,
Tugging all day at preverse life:
The indignity of it!--
With everything blooming above me,
Lilies, pale-pink cyclamen, roses,
Whole fields lovely and inviolate,--
Me down in that fetor of weeds,
Crawling on all fours,
Alive, in a slippery grave.
-- "Weed Puller" by Theodore Roethke

Last week I got out the push mower and attached the bag to it, determined to capture every last dandelion seed and commit it to the compost bin before it propagated to the remainder of the lawn and gardens--carbon footprint be damned! With teeth gritted and eyes stinging with sweat, I raced across the lawn decapitating thousands of the white fluffy horde. After several minutes I was surprised to find that the mower bag remained empty. I stopped the mower, removed the bag, and peered into its darkness. Nothing. Only then did I recall that I had not put in place the other attachment required to block the normal output for the clippings on the side of the mower. After a cursory search for said attachment in the garage, I resigned myself to the fact that the dandelions had won again. I had, in the end, merely assisted them in their evil plot to take over the ChemLawn-free lawns and gardens of the world. [Insert comically insane Dr. Evil laugh here].


In the annals of gardening and horticulture (and literature and religion), there is much discourse concerning the nature, relevance, and extermination of weeds. A search for weed quotes resulted in a cursory education on child-rearing, personal cleanliness, the nature of the Tao, mental health, morality, politics, Hallmark moments, Roundup, edible plants, and Theodore Roethke's poetry. The literature of Western culture is indeed thicker with weeds than my yard is with dandelions, yet I have to wonder whether that is any sort of consolation. How are we affected by being immersed in a culture obsessed with the elimination of potentially beneficial plants whose presence in certain locations we humans deem inappropriate, unsightly or downright evil?

I have known for sometime that dandelions are quite edible and that the young greens are a piquant complement to a salad. Moreover, I learned last week that one of my most prevalent garden "weeds," Plantago Major, is valued in many parts of the world for it's medicinal properties, as it has been proven to be a powerful coagulant and aids in abating infection and healing wounds. Perhaps there is a reason the weeds keep winning. I guess I'll withhold judgment at least until the dandelions show up again next spring.

Meanwhile, the Yugoslavian Red lettuce and Siberian Kale seem to have made amends. I think that's a young Lamb's Quarters hiding beneath the lettuce. Some quick research indicates that it too is edible and is in fact more nutritious than spinach, though it contains much more sodium.


We've eaten our first head of broccoli, and here's another one just beginning to form.


It looks to be a good year for strawberries if we keep them in water. This is a June-bearing variety, but if I were to do it over again, I'd definitely switch to ever-bearing just to give the chidren a few more weeks of grazing.


Maybe I'll come back to the "weed" question in the future, but I've run out of intellectual steam and need to get back to crawling on all fours in the fetor of work. Til next time...