Dandelion Seeds

Posted by Russ Devan (New Hanover, United States) on 27 June 2008 in Plant & Nature and Portfolio.

I shot this in my dandelion farm (aka, my backyard) one evening while mowing the lawn. I like how the evening sun brightly backlit the dandelion seedheads, so I stopped the lawn tractor and grabbed a few shots before cutting them down. The black background behind the dandelions are my stand of tall spruce trees that I planted as a privacy screen. As much as I liked how the dandelions looked with the backlighting, I like nice cut weeds, er....lawn.

I'm not one to apply weed killer and fertilizer to my lawn since I am on well water and the water table is only 12 feet down. It would be like peeing in my own drinking water if I added chemicals to my lawn as they would eventually leach through the soil and impact the ground water. In addition, a small stream is present directly behind my backyard, so any fertilizer/herbicides could runoff and directly impact the water quality, small fish, and ducks that live back there. Needless to say, I have the least golf course-like lawn on my street (notice that I didn't say worst lawn since I don't think it's bad to begin with). The guys at Scotts and Chemlawn probably hate me. Tough shit.

"The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both."
- Zen Buddhist Text

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