Every year, I insist on deadheading my dandelions. I'm a shit gardener but I love a balanced ecosystem, so this is my compromise: I leave the dandelions, but pick off and dispose of the seed heads and the closing blossoms before they become seed heads, thus controlling the population numbers for next season. I don't live in a super gentrified area or anything, but like, I still don't want my neighbors to think of me like some kind of Typhoid Mary.
Sometimes I feel silly and a bit overwhelmed, because there's a lot of them and I never get them all. And then there's always the possibility of a direct skin-to-exoskeleton encounter with a spider. (The baby wolf spiders are hard to spot until they skitter away from you to seek refuge under a different plant, although to be fair its hard to be too scared of something that is actively fleeing you.) (Thankfully it's too early in the season to worry much about the opiliones - my phobia, shut up - otherwise I'd be forced to go full monsanto on the yard.)
But then - but then - I get to meet beings like these. Happily feasting away, bringing order and balance, just being alive. And I'm reminded that I'm doing something very kind. And then it's all worth it.
This was supposed to be a video but tumblr only lets me add one at a time.
Now featuring the dulcet, ASMR tones of early summer in my neighborhood: children screaming at the top of their lungs. This is preferable to proper midsummer, when this is supplemented by 80dB engines roaring past at a rate of x3/hr (on weekdays, triple that on weekends.)
