Dandelions and Bees

“Good heavens! I’ve got to get out there and cut the grass!” I said to my husband. “This is ridiculous, it’s getting way too long.”

“Wait” he said, “you have to wait a little longer....for the dandelions....you can’t cut the dandelions, not yet.”

I must to be one of the few women out there whose mate is intent on preserving dandelions on the lawn. He wants to make sure I don’t cut them down and wishes we had more of them! Why? It’s the bees. Dandelions are one of their first foods after emerging from the hive in the spring. 

It does seem pretty precarious for the bees in May. The slowly arriving spring isn’t quick to provide them with an abundance of food. We even observed the bees searching for nectar on the sawdust and newly split firewood from a recently bucked aspen tree our beavers fell for us. They must have been drawn to the sweet sap in the freshly fallen tree. We do give them a needed boost by providing them with sugar water and pollen patties, but, like deciding when to wean a bottle lamb, you eventually have to stop feeding them and let them forage for themselves. It’s the withdrawal of the sugar water that prompted the obsession with dandelions.

Our sheep graze our lawn every morning. This is a great way to clip (and fertilize) the grass that I’m not allowed to mow because of the dandelions and the bees. The flock looks beautiful out there. I love looking at the moms with their little lambs and never tire of watching our majestic guardian dogs, Loki and Thor, trotting along with them. But this worked a lot better when we had over a hundred sheep with their lambs. Now we don’t have enough sheep to trim the grass to a nice comfortable length (defined by me as short enough to walk through in the early morning dew without getting your pant legs soaked). There’s also the problem of taste. Some grasses apparently taste better than others and the not-so-yummy ones get passed by giving the lawn a shaggy hummocky appearance. Really, I’m not super fussy, but a ragged lawn upsets my sense of balance somehow, like a crooked painting, it just puts me off. I really was getting anxious to cut the grass.

We would drive down the road and see fields riddled with dandelions, some so full it looked like they were the planted crop.  “I just don’t understand it! Why don’t we have more dandelions?” my husband would lament. “Did you see that? They’re everywhere except our place!” 

It turns out our dandelions were a bit later to bloom, maybe because we’re surrounded by bush. Our apple tree was later to bloom as well. But still, we do seem to have a nearly dandelion-less lawn. I don’t know why for certain. I have certainly made no effort for this to be, but I do have a suspicion as to the cause. I was watching the sheep out the kitchen window at breakfast one day while they were grazing away on our over-long lawn. Along came a ewe, munching away, passing up the grass and moving from dandelion to dandelion, daintily clipping off each scrumptious yellow flower one by one. I felt compelled to point this out to my husband. “No wonder,” I said, “they’re a sheep treat! We’ll never get any dandelions for the bees if the sheep are going to eat them - I guess I may as well cut the lawn today.”

“Not yet,” my husband said.

I finally was allowed to cut the grass. I bargained by limiting the area I would cut, leaving a large section to the west of the house for the sheep and the dandelions. After I cut the grass the dandelions seemed to multiply. And the second time I cut it I swear they ducked when the mower came by, then shot straight up a couple days later to air their puffy seed heads in the wind and ensure their survival for next year. Now it’s mid June and it’s rain that keeps me from cutting grass. The dandelions and the bees are doing fine.

mltipton.blogspot.com , https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, June 17, 2019