Just Where Exactly Does Everyone Think This Stuff Goes?

We recently commented on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, noting that "dispersants" and "evaporation" are misleading terms, because thanks to a little concept from elementary physics known as the Law of Conservation of Energy and Matter, nothing just disappears.  Oil is being dispersed to somewhere, and in the case of the Gulf oil spill, it's being dispersed to the underwater ecosystems that no one is noticing; Bobby Jindal is all upset about the Louisiana coast, but the fact that all the fish in the Gulf are dying is a distant concern to him as a human politician.

We were surprised and humbled to have been noticed by The Mike Malloy Show for that post.  Sorry for bumming you out, Mike, but it had to be said.  Anyway, we have in the interim had another instance forced upon our notice of people just not getting it when it comes to fouling our own nest.  The City of College Station evidently sprays herbicides in the storm gutters on our street.  Why they would do this is, to us at Myrtle's, a complete and baffling mystery.

Of course, we don't view weeds as a detraction around here; our chickens absolutely love dandelions; chickweed is called "chickweed" because chicks really dig it.  Dollar weed is a little trickier to harvest, but they gulp that down, too.   In short, all the things that people around these parts pour thousands of dollars of chemicals over the course of their lifetimes onto their lawns in order to kill are, on our backyard farm, considered a crop.

We suppose Shepherd's Purse doesn't look all that attractive to someone who is aspiring to a Better Homes and Gardens manicured St. Augustine lawn, but then, we consider it a damned sight better looking than a basal cell carcinoma.

 

And that's the bottom line:  we as a society have stopped thinking about long term consequences, and don't have the first clue about how to meld aesthetics and functionality.  A beautiful field of well-kept and manicured wildflowers is infinitely to be preferred to a chemical-laced poisonous field of perfectly manicured croquet lawn.  And weeds, unlike herbicides or pesticides, have never been linked to ADHD or other rampant childhood maladies.   Nobody came back from Vietnam with cancers caused by dandelions.

And no accidents, to our knowledge, have ever been caused by weeds growing in cracks in the cement in our city storm drains.  Can you just see Myrtle rolling her eyes?

When deciding how to care for our lawns... or our storm drains, for that matter... the question we ought to be asking ourselves is, "Do I want to eat or drink anything that has come into contact with this stuff?"

Because, honestly people, do you really think it just magically disappears once you've put it "out there"?  Are we really that daft?

So, to the good news:  Weeds are good!  Provided you're willing to do a little extra work, you can have a beautiful yard with lots of surprising little variations and pockets of color.  If you want to get rid of a certain species, overseed that area with clover.  In Texas, that means red clover in fall, white clover in spring.  If you have too many weeds and too much yard, get chickens!  Or better still, get a goat.

And happy farming!