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| Taraxacum officinale, April 12, 2018 |
The Spanish
expression, “Mala yerba nunca muere,” or bad weeds never die, has suffered a
transformation in the last few years.
Before the
expression was all about the dogged resilience of garden weeds to survive in
spite of everything the gardener might do to eradicate them. Now this bad weed
refers to drugs. At least three films in Spanish have been made (beginning in
1920) with the theme of a bad weed being a person with no redeeming quality.
Now there is a play on Broadway on the theme of drug lord.
When some
persistant politician of ill- repute would not go away in Latin America we
would often repeat the mala yerba refrán. Or when people ask me about my
Rosemary’s health I repeat it!
In my 80s
past when I was obsessed with having the perfect English lawn I resorted to a
fertilizer (no longer sold in our pesticice/heribicide weed Vancouver) called
Weed’n Feed. A few years later I understood the damage I was doing to the
environment and I used a very reliable and rewarding task of removing in
particular the common dandelion which has the interesting botanical name of
Taraxacum officinale.
In my
late teenagehood I was obsessed with reading science fiction. I read everything
by Ray Bradbury that I could find including Dandelion Wine. This is what
Wikipedia says of this fine novel:
Dandelion
Wine is a 1957 novel by Ray Bradbury, taking place in the summer of 1928 in the
fictional town of Green Town, Illinois, based upon Bradbury's childhood home of
Waukegan, Illinois. The novel developed from the short story "Dandelion
Wine" which appeared in the June 1953 issue of Gourmet magazine.
The
title refers to a wine made with dandelion petals and other ingredients,
commonly citrus fruit. In the story, dandelion wine, as made by the
protagonist's grandfather, serves as a metaphor for packing all of the joys of
summer into a single bottle.
The main
character of the story is Douglas Spaulding, a 12-year-old boy loosely
patterned after Bradbury. Most of the book is focused upon the routines of
small-town America, and the simple joys of yesterday.
Now in
2018 at age 75 I find myself troubled by the simple removal of the dandelions
in my Kitsilano laneway garden. Any living thing, including weeds that are so
persistent in existing require some respect. I feel guilty removing them by digging
underneath with my rose secateurs.
But I take them
out anyway. I hope my life is as equally persistent.