When the Liberal government announced that they were going to legalize weed, I thought that meant growing thistles and dandelions was going to be the “in thing.” You know, kind of how Prime Minister Trudeau has made doing yoga poses on board tables cool. Except the only yoga pose I’ve ever perfected is corpse pose.
But back to weed weeds… (if only I could elbow them out of the way.)
Since we bought a home in Calgary eleven years ago, our approach to weeds has evolved. This is our first house; prior to that, my husband and I lived in apartments. In this past decade of having a yard, we’ve considered a number of approaches to dealing with weeds:
Strategy 1 (c. 2005): Contemplate hiring the big guns. My only experience with weeds up until that point was from my childhood, spent on a grain farm in Manitoba. When weeds were sewing their wild oats in a section of wheat, a crop duster flew over, dodged power lines, and took care of the weeds. My time in Calgary has taught me that airplanes carpet bombing weeds are frowned upon in suburbia.
Strategy 2 (c. 2005-2006): Ignore. This strategy worked for the first year. The woman we bought the house from was a horticulturalist. Our yard was weed free! Until year two.
Strategy 3 (c. 2006): Get my husband to do it. After a year of untended weeds, they flourished like Donald Trump in 2016 America. My husband decided to “take care of” our street-facing flowerbed. It was April, and he pulled the weeds. And nearly all of the perennials.
Strategy 4 (c. 2006-2015): Ignore the weeds for so long that you become known as the block’s Dandelion Seed Factory. I wish I were joking. Apparently weeds are not for sharing. They’re even in my perennial-less flowerbed…
Strategy 5 (c. 2016): Accept a rather serendipitous challenge by The Scotts® Miracle-Gro. Get applauded by neighbours. Set in action the quintessential Canadian conflict: person versus nature. Suburban woman versus the weed (not “weed” — I limit my drugs to Advil and wine, thankyouverymuch). I will be using the smaller version of this: Scotts® EcoSense® Weed B Gon® Ready-To-Use… mostly on my weeds, because it’s fun to shoot things, it’s easy, and it’s effective (you can see results in hours—which never happens when I do yoga!)
So, do you have weeds in your lawn? Is there a Dandelion Seed Factory in your neighbourhood? If there is and you share a photograph of weeds in your yard, nine people will receive a coupon for $5 off Weed B Gon®. Coupons means saved money, which means more money for wine (and maybe even Advil), followed by corpse pose, of course.
THE CONTEST: For a chance to receive a coupon, simply share a photo of weeds on Instagram or Facebook and tag #WeedBGon
And while you’re at it, follow the #ScottsWeedBGon challenge. I’ll make you laugh. Mostly at me, sometimes at my husband.
Full disclosure (which is different from a full-frontal disclosure, in case you were wondering): The Scotts® Miracle-Gro Company has compensated me to write about their products, which will help cover some of my blog hosting costs. All opinions, dead grass, and weeds are my own.
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