I like dandelions, really I do. Seeing their sunny wildness against a background of green lawn makes me smile. But I also want to be a good neighbor. Good neighbors don’t raise a crop of flowers that release hundreds of floating seeds to infiltrate nearby manicured lawns.
When I was a child, we called their delicate white seed carriers, which floated on the breeze, “fairies.” We would catch them, make a wish and blow them off our hands. I can’t remember if any of my wishes came true. But each year we chased after the “fairies” so we could wish.
A few years after we moved to Montclair, we had a bumper crop of those cheerful yellow flowers scattered over our front and back lawns. Though I enjoyed the sight, I knew that the following year there would be exponentially more, both in our yard and our neighbors. So I paid my then-young children to dig them out at five cents a plant. When they had filled a small bucket, they complained that it was hard work. So I doubled their wages. They actually removed almost every dandelion.
Each year since then I’ve only had to remove a few dozen dandelions from our lawn.
Last Friday I spent over an hour digging out every lion-headed flower I could find on our property. Today, ten more of the sinister little plants reared their golden heads. I dug out nine. The children on our block should have “fairies” to chase. I want to be a good neighbor.
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