Green, Everywhere its Green!

I went to bed Saturday night but had a little trouble sleeping. Everytime I closed my eyes I would see this wall of dandelions. Not the flowers, but just the green leaves. Except it wasn't a wall it was the ground and my head was bent over looking down at them. Green everywhere, as far as my mind's eye could see...

Let's go back to Wednesday evening when I was out back cooking dinner on the BBQ. My neighbour Steve comes out of his garage and we make some small talk. Then he says, "hey I've something for you to try." He goes into his garage and returns with a contraption used to pull weeds (especially dandelions) out of the ground. It has six spikes that come out of holes in the bottom and are angeled inwards to form a point. You place it over the centre of a weed, press down with your foot on a pedal, and the spikes surround the root of the weed and you pull it out.

I had a bumper crop of dandelions in the back yard, and the front yard was well taken over by the weeds. I tried out Steve's tool and it worked pretty good, the one downside being you needed to bang on the knob on the top to get it to let go of the weed once you had it out of the ground.

Realizing I had a serious weed issue, and feeling a little guilty that I had one of the worst lawns in the neighbourhood, I resolved to seriously think about getting one of those weeders. Maybe. If, you know, I feel like it.

Fast forward to Saturday morning. I look out the window across the street and to my horror I see Neil using Steve's tool to getting the dandelions in his front yard. Why the horror you ask? Well, there are five houses that are my immediate neighbours. Steve on one side of us, Art on the other, and directly across the street is Neil with Tom beside him across from Steve's place and The Bald Guy We Don't Know the Name Of (aka BGWDKTNO, or BG for short) across from Art. Of the six front lawns, Tom's, Steve's, and BG's lawns are immaculate seas of green grass cut to perfection. Art's lawn is very nice with only a few dandelions here and there. My lawn and Neil's were both peppered with yellow. Ok, more than peppered. Saturated.

And there was Neil, out changing the balance of power. If he got rid of the dandelions on his lawn then my place would be That Place, the one the neighbours snort and shake their head in disgust at our obvious lack of pride and work ethic. When we weren't alone it was ok, but I couldn't stand to be the lone slacker.

I quickly grabbed my wallet and walked up to Home Hardware where I laid out some cash not only for the weed tool, but also for some grass seed and turf builder with weed control. When I compete, I leave it all on the mat. I got home and got to work.

I think it was around 10:30 or 11:00 when I started, its hard to remember. The day seemed to blend together after that. I know there was lunch, and a birthday party for Mikaela, but the rest of the time I was in that front yard repeating the same motion over and over and over again. My hand on the handle would cramp up from gripping it and the other hand would get sore on the palm from whacking the knob to drop the weed, so I switched hands to give them each a break and hurt them in a different manner. My upper back became sore from bending over to look at the ground where I aimed, and later that night my right shoulder was so sore from hefting the tool around all day I needed to take some medication and heat pad.

When I started I didn't think I would do it all in one go, but as the lawn slowly turned from yellow saturation to green perfection, I could not stop. I am a boulder, hard to get moving but an unstoppable force once I am rolling. And roll I did. After a while my hands went numb and I simply became a robot of weed destruction. Some parts of the lawn were horribly overrun where I didn't bother aiming the tool, I just put it down, stomped the pedal, and withdrew a weed. The sun beat down and gave me a sunburn, but I didn't notice as the air was cool and I was in the zone. The zone of weed destruction.

I finished around 4 or 5, not sure when and the front lawn was pristine in its greenness. There were still some unflowered dandelions hiding but I knew they could be dealt with over the summer as they showed their yellow faces. The war was won, and the lawn was mine.

A quick mow and rake and watering before calling it quits that evening, and the next morning I
went out and applied the turf builder using Steve's spreader* and worked a little on the smaller dandelion population in the back yard. Never again shall I allow the foul yellow weed to take over my property. Fear me, for I am Bill, the destroyer of Dandelions.

* Steve lets me borrow lots of tools from him because I think he wants me to keep my lawn clear of weeds so that they don't send dandelion seeds over on his pristine lawn.