Battle of the weeds

Good grass vs bad grass

A weed is just a plant in the wrong place. Grass can become a weed when it decides to grow up in ornamental grass that is not a weed. Make sense? "Weeds" that make you ponder this weird logic on your hands and knees are the worst kind.

There's nothing subtle about this weed:


I don't know its name, but it's ubiquitous in West Seattle parking strips where using herbicides isn't politically correct anymore. It looks like a tough-ass dandelion. Or a dandelion on steroids. The leaves spread like a platter across a lawn and it grows amazingly fast. The tap root breaks off when you pull it. If you resort to a squirt of Round-Up when no one is looking, it dies but leaves a hole along with an incriminating circle of yellow grass telling your neighbors what you did.

Anyway, everyone loves to hate dandelions but they're sweet compared to that weed. Edible and medicinal, too. I remember my mother in early spring with an old paring knife cutting and filling a colander with the first dandelions. That dandelion salad was a big treat in the days when you couldn't buy fresh leafy lettuce all year. And a spring tonic to boot-- dandelion is loaded with vitamins and good for liver detoxification. After a long winter, who doesn't need some of that?

Will to Live

I think of all things that show a zest
For life, the dandelion beats the rest.
The little winged seeds from its white fluff ball
Settle and grow with no urging at all.
Settle in most unlikely places
And soon there's a crop of dandelion faces.

They are man's worst pest, but a child's playthings.
Sometimes I wish I had light down wings
Like a dandelion seed, and could settle at will
On a velvety lawn or a sun-spread hill,
And live with the eagerness and zest
Of the wanton little dandelion pest.

Mary Tripleti