Thoughts . . . by Mark Rich

. . . scribbled . . . scrawled . . . trimmed . . . typewritten . . . grubbed up . . . squeezed from circumstance . . .

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Unintended Consequences

I have been engaged in some early-spring digging in the garden -- expanding a plot that started as a circle a couple years ago, and that last year I joined with other, likewise expanding garden plots. I am edging its lower border with miscellaneous rocks we have picked up off at road cuts, and "paving" a section of the adjoining walking path with wood chips I scavenged from the village compost pile just this afternoon.

As I was digging out shovel-bites of lawn, I was occasionally finding dandelions. When your blade slices through them, you see circular root cross-sections that are bright white in contrast to the dark clay. These I dutifully was digging up, in hopes of minimizing the weeding to be done later in the season.

And of course while doing so, the winemaker's worry beset me ... one that will seem a silly worry to most people.

Will we have enough dandelions, this spring? We keep reducing the amount of lawn in the back yard -- which means the numbers of large, well-established dandelions keeps going down ... but without them where will we harvest our deep bowls of golden-brilliant blooms for winemaking?

As I said, a silly worry -- for most folks.

Cheers ...

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