Sunday, June 12, 2011

Backyard invasion

Editor's note --  A Georgia resident remains unconvinced by WSJ's ode to weeds. Kevin Brown will never love Poison ivy or Kudzo. 


"I'll defend my backyard from their advances," Brown avowed. "By any means!" 


 k. a. gardner 
WSJ.com - Why We Must Learn to Love Weeds  -- their cussedness and refusal to play by our rules makes them subversive?

Weeds
Dunwoody resident Kevin Brown's backyard?  (photo Grant Heilman)
Editor's note 
-- (AP) Herd of sheep eat invasive Kudzo in Mr Brown's backyard, but only after they finish off the poison ivy, said local Shepard.

 k. a. gardner 


3 comments:

  1. I come out on the side of the weeds as my back garden if currently in full bloom with the little blighters.

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  2. I guess the 'poison ivy' didn't 'poison the sheep. Perhaps Mr. Brown doesn't grow very much of the p. ivy.
    My guess is that he will find the sheep and the caring of them will be worse and more trouble than the vegetation he is trying be rid of the easy way out.
    My dad, a Nebraska farmer, taught me to hate sheep so I will never test his methods. Besides we don't have poison ivy and Kudzu here in Texas where I live. Our Governor Perry would not allow it.
    ..

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  3. Happy to hear, CJ.

    Jim, I'm real lucky I'm at the computer reading WSJ's Weekend Essay because I can tell you what it says about poison ivy just in case you're interested.

    Toxicity is seen as another ugly and undesirable trait. The most notorious weed in the United States is poison ivy, whose impact has been immortalized in a Leiber and Stoller ditty from 1959, one of a small group of popular songs to be titled after a weed (Elvis recorded Tony Joe White's "Poke Salad Annie," for example).

    In the lyrics, poison ivy is likened to a scheming woman, who'll "get under your skin," whereupon—and it's one of the great rhyming couplets of pop music—"You're gonna need an ocean / Of calamine lotion."

    In fact, calamine can hardly cope with the effects, which are florid and quite out of proportion to what is usually the briefest of encounters. Just the softest brush with a broken leaf can cause nightmarish effects on the skin. It goes red, blisters and itches uncontrollably.

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