emmersdrawberry:

nestofstraightlines:

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kittyknowsthings:

mszombi:

rabbittrabbitt:

taavot:

remember being little and thinking dandelions were fun or a pretty color or something and every adult in an 80 mile radius wouldn’t let you say that without screaming ITS A WEED

also like:

• dandelions are edible, easy to grow, and are rich in vitamins a, c, k, beta-carotene, calcium, iron, manganese, and potassium
  
• dandelions can be made into wine, tea, soft drinks, and a coffee substitute
• they are used in herbal remedies to treat liver and digestive problems and as a diuretic
• they’re good for bees!
• they make good companion plants for various herbs and tomatoes; their long taproot helps bring up nutrients in the soil and they release ethylene gas which ripens fruit
• dandelions secrete latex which means they can be used to make natural rubber 
• they make great flower crowns 

Why ARE they considered a weed? They’re a good flower? Who decided they were bad? =(

You can also make beautiful jelly from the blossoms!

They’re considered weeds because they were a poor person resource and not having them was a status symbol.

Let’s back up.

In Europe dating back to the 1500’s and even earlier, you could only have immaculate manicured lawns if you had just pots of money and were able to own land. So, rich nobility had swaths of land, and they demonstrated their wealth and power by hiring people to physically cut the grass and keep their gardens and dig weeds out of the turf by hand. It was a demonstration of money and power. It said “I can afford to have eight people employed full time just to dig things that aren’t grass out of my grass. I can afford to have all of this land doing nothing. It’s not producing food. People don’t farm it or live on it. I can afford to just grow grass, and have someone tend to that wholly useless crop.”

Fast forward a few hundred years. Europeans come to America. Many of them are from the poorer classes in Europe. Many have never owned land before, and now all of a sudden they can (because they stole it from the Native Americans but that’s a whole other rant.)

Now, at first you see little cottage gardens like the lower classes in Europe always had around their homes; places where they grew food and herbs and kept chickens or other livestock. Dandelions were welcome here; they were eaten and brewed into wine and used for medicine, just as they’d been for centuries.

But then people start making a little money, and we have the whole phenomenon of people who can demonstrate that they are Moving Up In The World by buying all of their food and medicine, just like the old landed gentry back in the Old Country. So they do. What goes in the place of those cottage gardens? Why, the same thing that went in the place of productive land back in the Earl of Chatsworth’s front lawn; a lawn.

So. Dandelions were a symbol. They were a throwback to the old days. They were a sign that you were somehow less prosperous than your neighbors, or lazier. (A Mortal Sin in America.) But, many Americans work, and can’t afford to hire a gardener just to grub dandelions out of the yard with a trowel all day.

Enter the lawn care industry, which began to market a dizzying array of poisons and fertilizers aimed at making your lawn a sterile moonscape where only grass grew with minimum effort from the homeowner. This continues to this day and is a multibillion dollar industry that has huge negative impacts on the environment and human health, but we can’t seem to shake that old ideal of a manicured lawn.

We pour water on deserts and poison on native wildflowers to attain it. We expose our children to poisons. We poison pollinators and pets. The days where we recognized a well kept lawn as a symbol of aristocratic leisure are gone, but we’ve been successfully fed a lie that some dandelions and chickweed are Bad by the lawn care industry in their ads for decades. They, obviously, want to keep it going because they’re making fat $$$$$$$ off of us.

THAT’S why dandelions are viewed as weeds.

Also yeah dandelions are really good for bees, and beloved by native bees and honeybees alike. So please, leave them blooming!! You can support bees and do your bit to smash capitalistic exploitation of the working class and the environment all in one go!

Lawns are terrible things, a redundant status symbol (‘I don’t need to grow food on my land’ is no longer a proud boast), boring verging on ugly and vastly consuming of water and labour. Let the dandelions grow!

I can’t believe dandelions suffered classism.

(via firesuperstar)

star-anise:

akamine-chan:

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kylos-knight:

goldenheartedrose:

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bigwordsandsharpedges:

turtletot43:

harmonicakind:

i was about to joke about how my political stance is “end lawnmower culture” but then it occurred to me that i actually Am against lawns as suburban status symbols and wastes of land that Could be used to sustain native flora & fauna and grow food for people, but no, instead they are these huge useless swaths of land that need Constant maintenance, the process of which is not only destructive, but Incredibly Loud

You know that actually is the purpose of a lawn? They started as a trend of the French monarchy - the ones revolutionaries beheaded for being self indulgent assholes.

It exists purely as a status symbol that says, “I have land but I don’t have to use it for anything productive. I can invest time, money and resources in maintaining an entirely useless crop on land I’m not farming just because it looks pretty.”

Lawns offend me.

Why have that stunted golf course in front of your suburban house if you can’t even water it? Get one of these instead.

Unite Against the Lawn

Pro tiny house, anti grass lawn. Prioritize practicality.

This is actually really interesting because back in the 1950s and 60s in Australia when we started getting large waves of Southern European migrants one thing the Italians and others would often so is buy a little suburban home, then tear out the ornamental flower beds and lawn and useless trees and plant fruits, vegetables, grapes and even olives. It was considered completely scandalous by their Anglo-Saxon neighbours because lawn was considered an aspirational thing and the ideal was to go from not needing a kitchen garden and having an ornamental garden to show how well you were doing.

This is great. All of it.
Not to derail this too much, but “Lawnmower” culture also reminds me of aggressively heterosexual men. Men ALWAYS will use mowing the lawn as a way to get out of doing all the other household chores – having a lawn that a man mows somehow makes maintaining everything else inside a house the women’s responsibility.
Down with lawnmower culture.

i’ve actually read a whole book on lawns and lawn culture (yes, really) it’s called lawn people by paul robbins check it out and let’s all boycott lawn culture together!!!

@hoaxtumbles I want a vegetable lawn 

Agriburb!

I have never really thought about how lawns came to be like a standard thing but wow this makes sense. I hate mowing the lawn boycott all lawns

lawns actually cause a lot of habitat fragmentation for local wildlife and plants so fuck lawns

Article about biodiversity and how lawns are Not Good and plants you can grow to help

Video about the same!

This is so great.

Also, some of my neighbors have really big lawns and I mean really, and I think I was so baffled a few years ago that I asked one of them, “so what is a lawn for exactly?” and they said “Idk so my kids can play on it” but honey how many kids actually play on their front lawn I mean I have never seen a single youngling on that grass football field in front of your house

@tea-zilla

only tumblr would have lawn discourse

and only tumblr would convince me to take a stand against lawns

😏

Even if you don’t fill your lawn in with garden, there are more eco-friendly seed blends that are drought tolerant, self-fertilizing, and don’t require mowing, like Eco-lawn or a mix from Pro-Time Lawn Seed.  This spring I’m looking forward to seeding my yard with Fleur de Lawn, which mixes hardy seed grasses with flowers.

Fuck yeah.

(Source: selfiegoth, via timurmurtazin)