JUST WRITE!
How green is my alley
By Tracey Coveart/The Scugog Standard

Is it just me or does anyone else feel the current pesticide ban was perhaps a little ill-conceived? I used to have a beautiful, lush lawn. Now, I have a beautiful, lush dandelion patch.

There was a time when I would have considered this a selling feature. At one of our country homes I deliberately cultivated knee-high weeds because they were a haven for bees. And you know what’ll happen if bees go extinct, right? Scientists predict we’ll last two years before we starve to death.

I raised bumblebees when I was a student at the University of Toronto. My zoology professor was a bee researcher/keeper and he had an apiary in his office. He left the windows open and the bumbles would just come and go as they pleased, flying out to do their work and back in, with pollen sacks bulging, to feed their colony. I developed quite an affinity for them and to this day I speak to them fondly as they buzz past me. I was never stung; not while balancing on a ladder with my head in the cherry blossoms harvesting queens from the uppermost branches or removing the cozy pollinators from their special nesting boxes with a pair of tweezers so we could change their bedding. And I learned a terrific party trick along the way. Because the drones don’t sting, my fellow apiologists would fill their mouths with a handful of fuzzy males and then open wide to say hello, spilling insects into the room, much to the startlement of the other guests. They were a fun bunch of guys.

I transferred this love of bees to my ‘estate lot’ outside of Ottawa and while I was thrilled with the wild sanctuary I created and proud that I was doing my part to save humankind, my neighbours - with their immaculate lawns carved into checkerboard patterns - didn’t share my passion for urban wilderness or appreciate my civic-mindedness. So disdainful were they of my colourful ecolawn that I was eventually strong-armed into buying a riding lawn tractor. Unfortunately for the bees, I learned to love that, too, and spent hours manicuring my two acres with my mighty blade.

When I moved to Whitby, I made the natural leap onto the pesticide bandwagon and mowed my suburban postage stamp on a diagonal like a good little neighbour.

I didn’t like the idea of pesticide use, but I didn’t like the idea of being ostracized, either. So when that green and yellow truck drove into the neighbourhood to spray our slice of cookie-cutter heaven, I grabbed the kids and hightailed it for the countryside, where things smelled like manure not brain poison.

Now that pesticides are banned, I can almost hear my cells thanking me for keeping at least a few carcinogens at bay. But I can hear my lawn screaming for a little Chlorthal dimethyl.

Uncultivated lawns are the collateral damage in the war on chemicals. There was a time when a single dandelion was an eyesore; an ugly interloper that was pounced upon and viciously uprooted with the Fiskars Deluxe Telescopic Stand-Up Weeder as soon as it reared its ugly head.

Not even the Fiskar is man enough for this job. No sooner do I pluck one Jurassic plant out of the lawn than another appears. I’m beginning to think they’ve discovered a way to spontaneously germinate.

Grass is becoming an endangered species. I’m thinking of making a plaster cast of the few blades that remain in my yard so I can show my great-grandchildren what it looked like.

Of course, not every lawn in the neighbourhood is as unruly as mine. There are cheaters among us. I suspect anyone with an impossibly thick, green retro-lawn cashed in their investments to stockpile weed killer when they heard about the impending ban. Now they sneak out their secret stash in the middle of the night and spray it on their happy grass when the pesticide police are sleeping.

Me? I’m going to embrace my inner flower child and make dandelion wine while the sun shines.