My dandelion digger has gone missing.
I am secretly pleased.
I love my dandelions. Their perky yellow flowers add a little surprise to my uniformly green lawn. They’re the perfect size – not too big, not too tall, pleasingly symmetrical. And if that weren’t enough, I can snip the leaves and toss them in a salad.
My mother doesn’t share my sentiments. To her, dandelions are dangerous weeds to be eradicated before they go to seed and spread all over the yard.
She is the sole wielder of my dandelion digger, and I let her do it because, after all, Weeds are Bad.
Everyone knows this. By letting my dandelions grow, I am broadcasting to the neighborhood that I am a lazy homeowner.
But ever since my dandelion digger disappeared, I have an excuse. I am not lazy, just careless, which seems much more acceptable to me. And the last of my dandelions populate my backyard like falsely accused convicts given a last-minute reprieve by the governor.
But that’s not to say I’m a fan of weeds in general. I molest the thistles in my vegetable garden with a passion that would make the heroine of a Harlequin romance blush.
I constantly pull cheat grass from the rocks on the side of my house. And I was so horrified when the Chinese elm trees I cut down last year morphed into giant Chinese elm bushes that I broke my pledge to keep my yard organic and went out and bought the nastiest poison I could find to spread all over the stumps, completely unremorseful about being a baby elm killer.
Many of my friends have a similar love-hate relationship with their weeds. One carefully cultivates a milkweed, knowing her neighbors look at her askance, because she likes the flowers and the fact that it attracts butterflies. Another encourages clover in her lawn, figuring it’s just a matter of time before a four-leaf version appears. And one of my neighbors was so entranced with the flowers on his bindweed that he built a trellis for it, as if it were an exotic species of clematis.
Dictionary definitions of a weed contain words like valueless, troublesome or undesirable. That implies that if a plant is valued, trouble-free or desirable, it’s not a weed.
But Colorado’s weed experts – and there are many, including a state weed coordinator – say it’s not that simple.
Some plants that were once sold in garden centers and planted as ornamental flowers have overrun their backyard habitats and spread to fields around the state, choking out the native vegetation.
No matter how much you may love these weeds, how many trellises or flower beds you may devote to them, they are Bad Weeds – so bad that they have their own designation: noxious.
I always thought noxious meant smelly, and others believe it’s a hybrid of toxic and obnoxious. Weed experts say what it really means is a non-native plant with aggressive tendencies, detrimental to agriculture and the environment.
There are more than 70 plants on the state noxious weed list, and county weed agents spend their days eradicating them.
(Fortunately, dandelions aren’t noxious, so I can grow them with impunity, if not approval.)
