Neither Dandy, nor Lion

I came of age in the 1960s. I still think that peace is better than war, that no so-called “race” is better than any other, that jazz is our country’s greatest contribution to the world, that women should be allowed to have sex with me without getting married, and that we should stop poisoning our planet. Except for dandelions. Poison those little yellow-headed bastards, I say. G’wan ahead.

We have spoken of dandelions on this page before. As a matter of fact, I started this column one year to the day after that column ran. I didn’t know it. It’s just that May is when the dandelions come out … little flat-leaved bastards.

So here’s what I did this week. I bought me a medium-size bottle of dandelion poison. I poured it into a jar and screwed it onto the end of my back-yard hose. Then I sprayed that poison onto the legions of dandelions that have commandeered my back yard for two years, hosting their vile, angiosperm orgies, day and night, depriving me of my back yard.

As I did this, I sang and danced to mine own rendition of “A Hard Day’s Night” and hollered: “Die! (Very Bad Word Here) Die!”

I know, I know. I’m a Voodoo Child, Runnin’ Wild.

Mind you, my front yard is free of dandelions without benefit or detriment of chemicals. I have plucked, with these hands of mine, by my own count — who else would count it? — more than 4,000 dandelions from my front yard since Day 1 one year ago.

My neighbor Gina — who, by the way, has way too many dandelions in her front yard, perilously close to mine own, when the winds blow from the sou’ sou’west — Gina, I say, told me she thinks it’s “funny” that I count the dandelions as I yank them.

Funny? Funny?

First off, Gina — if that is truly your name — there is nothing funny about it.

Second — and I believe this is the second time I have told you this — I do it because it helps me hate dandelions. And who else will count them?

The Pest Control Division of the City of Denver will not. I know because I asked.

Nor will the Denver County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office issue a Shoot on Sight order for dandelions. I know because vide supra.

(PS: That arrest warrant has been quashed.)

And I know you won’t do it, Gina, because just this morning I counted the dandelions in your front yard. There were 68 dandelions, Gina — 68. And you won’t let me kill them.

So where does that leave us?

I’ll tell you where it leaves me. I stepped into my back yard t’other day — first 90˚-day in Denver this year — and you know what I saw? Fields of green. OK, technically, one field, and it’s not exactly a field, but — shut up, I’m telling this.

My back yard looked decent, for once. No 200 grizzled white heads bobbing over obscene purple tubes marred the landscape. Nary a one. True, some lucky survivors lurked by the back fence, where the hose don’t reach, but I’ll tend to them mine own self, with these hands of mine, soon as the weather cools I promise you that.

And I promise you this, all of my faithful readers — Mom — I will scrape out the brown spots in the back lawn and reseed them with Kentucky bluegrass, with these, mine own hands, that were bred, probably, for typing.

So. Sorry, my old hippie friends. Sorry, Peter, Paul, Mark and John, Patrick, Russell, Jane, Clifford, Rob, Colin and Joe.

Sorry, Center for Biological Diversity and all the rest o’ yez. Sorry I have to say this — but I did it and I’m glad.

Courthouse News columnist Robert Kahn worships at the Dave Barry chapel of humor, which follows the precepts of our beloved founder, who wrote: “The average American homeowner would rather live next door to a serial killer than to a guy who doesn’t take care of his lawn.” Mass gatherings prohibited.

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