I like to run outdoors for exercise daily … well, more like slow jog at my age. Due to cranky bones and joints, I prefer to run on grass boulevards along sidewalks rather than on the concrete. But running in recent weeks has been a true nuisance. Not only is the boulevard grass unmowed and long, which makes for heavier slogging, but the dandelions along most of my preferred route are mid-shin high so that I leave waves of floating spores in my wake as I slap my way through.
As well, the lawn in my yard has never been as thick with dandelions as this spring. Instead of the City sending crews to mow the green areas while the dandelions are still flowers, they wait and wait until the flowers have gone to seed and then come by to scatter the spores far and wide. And so everyone in my neighbourhood is infested with dandelions, and appears to be spraying more than ever before. Some evenings, it’s hard to walk past houses without a nose plug.
When I speak to city officials, I’m told there are two things I should stop to consider. One is that it’s much more environmentally friendly to have halted the city’s noxious weed-spraying program (leaving the citizens to double up on their own). The second reason is a budgetary concern that’s resulted in fewer mowing crews (…ostensibly because traffic circles to nowhere and empty accordion-buses and snowplows running three abreast up and down streets in March two weeks after the snow has fallen take precedence).
It’s probably just me, but I have trouble with such rationalizing.
St. Albert, where we “Cultivate Life.” Yeah, right. Cultivate Dandelions is more to the truth.
Jerry Wowk, St. Albert
