shades of the dandelion birth control patrol

[click image]

I have been knocked offline for the entire day, fuming about all the stuff I had planned to do here, and soothing myself with little trips out to pluck strawberries in my yard, go to the store, go chat-up the postmaster, catch up on my magazines, but it took all day to settle my hash. I'd finally really dropped into relaxed mode in my big overstuffed chair and the pages of my New Yorker when suddenly a bunch of emails bonged and about startled me into bumping my head on the ceiling. C'est la vie.

One of those emails was BB2 announcing he'd gotten his latest field trip images up after lots of Blogger and template hassles, so I moseyed over to check it out. Well, what to my horror but he'd stuck in a photo of a dandelion puff I could not grab before the wind blew it to the ten directions and it set me off again.

I lived waaaaaay the heck out in the country for many years. I almost never changed out of my blue flannel negligee and hightop sneakers. I read everything that was not nailed down, mostly translations of the ancient masters, but also the thousands upon thousands of books on my friend's huge house full of bookshelves and 86's walls full of them too, plus the cast off New Yorkers from a reusing freak in town. I interrupted this action betimes to go out and plant hillsides full of redwood saplings, or scream on the phone to Wall Street lummoxes who were stupidly trying to scam people into ruining about 80,000 acres of prime redwood timberlands, or succumb to a lethal chocolate craving, but, over all, all I did was read and get up to do my daily dandelion birth control patrol. I'd walk every inch of the meadow and the grove and deadhead every dandelion bloom that started up. Over the course of years, this drastically reduced the population of that ugly weed trying to drown out the ferns and daisies and a million gorgeous wildflowers.

I cannot see one, EVER, without my hand shooting out to rip it from its stem, and woe betide the puff ball that tries to elude my efforts! I grasp them fast as lightning and dump them in the stove, wickedly cackling as they burn.

Now I'm ablaze in the knowledge those suckers are out there, all over the planet, getting away with it!