Is This You? Can’t You See It?

By Trina Machacek

I am a weed hater. I hate the word hate. But when it comes to weeds in my yard, I am not afraid to say, “I hate weeds.” I can tell what time of year it is by the weeds that grow here.

Trina Machacek

Dandelions poke up first. Come March or April I sit in my house and I can hear them pop-pop-popping out little yellow spitfires. Over time I have been taught to let ‘em go for the little early bees. But! Yes, a yellow rimmed “but.” I can SEE them. Getting all yellow with cute early flowers. Then poofy white heads appear and at the littlest breeze, seeds are let out to create more of the same. AARRGGHH

Now it is getting onto fall, Autumn, after summer, Indian Summer, some timed equinox. Nope, to me it’s the time of year when those special weeds that produce goat heads grow faster than I can spray or stick them with my sharpened shovel! Overnight, where there was dirt at night, can’t you just see the sprouts sprouting? These babies grow long fingers with the cutest tiny yellow flowers. All grabbing at the ground so you have to follow the stringers to the mother ship to get a good kill rate!  Yes, my friend, I am the person that says with not a bit of regret, “The best weed is a deader than dead weed. Not just dead, but dead-dead.”

There is also this other dirt grabber fall weed that is bigger than the goat head weed. Growing along the ground, I can see some of them from where I am sitting. Laughing at me as they grow stringers with bigger darker three leaf clumps. Can’t you see it? What this one loses to speed in growth to the goat heads it makes up for with size. Huge, it grows huge before you can say “Where’s my Weed-be-gone?”

The monster of them all? Poverty weed? Thistles? Tumble weeds? All take a back seat to the one the only the ever-bearing Milk Weeds! Yes, what I call dandelions on steroids. Milk Weed—the weed with its own WANTED DEAD NOT ALIVE poster posted at the extension office. HAHA. The unmistakable bug attractor that ants love, worms love, caterpillars love. I am not infatuated with the beauty of the yellow sunflower like faces that come on and come on, all summer long. Followed by the huge puffs of beautiful seed pods. “Oh, how pretty,” I have heard from many friends. “Oh, and look at the seeds, as they float through the air. Don’t they look just like delicate little Fairies? Or Pyxies.” No, no they do not look like mini-Tinkerbells.

Asclepias Syriac is the official scientific name for my nemesis of milk weed. Before you get ready to send me letters of how wonderful it is. Medicinal and magical. Beautiful and good for the bees and other little creatures. I once heard it lovingly called The Butterfly Weed. There are places that grow them for that reason. Me? Well, right off, can’t you see that it is indeed a WEED!

Across my back barbed wire fence is a farm that raises alfalfa and sheep. Sheep will eat nearly anything. But even sheep cough and spit at milk weed. That says it all for me. It’s never been truer to say this when someone is trying to glorify milk weed, “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

However you believe things are created, you cannot convince me that a weed is something I should revere. As an example of a weedless life, take one of those pictures of miles and miles of tulips in Holland, that you may see in a magazine. Do you see a weed anywhere there? How about the hanging gardens of Victoria British Columbia, or a picture of the screwy Lombard Street in San Francisco.  Any weeds. Nope. I rest my case.

I also have a few Quaking Aspen, or Quakie trees in my yard. When I go by them the branches and leaves are so soft and lovely. Silvery green leaves, small and flittering in a breeze. In the mountains in the fall a stand of Quakies is quite beautiful. But they grow like a weed. They send out shoots and grow like crazy when you add water. They are the only good weeds I can think of. All others will poke you, stick you, sting you or scratch or scrape at you.

Yes, on the whole, weeds and their fairy seeds, can’t you just see them, they’re just asking for trouble. We need to stand together or we will surely be taken in by the pretty little purple flowers of a thistle.

Trina lives in Diamond Valley, north of Eureka, Nevada. She loves to hear from readers. Email her at itybytrina@yahoo.com