There are certain topics that define the generation gap between me as a Gen Xer and my mother, a Baby Boomer: music, (I like hip-hop; she, not so much), even food (I am mainly vegetarian; mom regularly cooks meat). To this list, I add a divisive gardening hot-button: dandelions. My mom despises these "weeds." Not  only do I like dandelions, I seek them out.



Admittedly, there are better-looking flowers around this time of year, what with tulips and daffodils in stunning profusion. Nevertheless, I maintain that Taraxacum officinale is unfairly scorned. It doesn't compete with tulips or other flowerbed royalty. Instead, it inhabits—some would say "threatens"—that peculiar American obsession: the perfect lawn.



I love dandelions for more than aesthetic reasons. I love them because I'm a parent. I have a toddler who enjoys nothing more than romping in the grass. Dandelions serve as a useful sentinel. They tell me right away which lawns have been sprayed with pre-emergents and which haven't. In a word, they tell me where it's safe for my boy to play. A dandelion is nature's way of proclaiming, "This lawn NOT chemically treated." Where there aren't any dandelions—and there's nary a one in the courtyard of my condominium—I drag my boy past. Far better to go to the park with its six billion dandelions. He could eat the dandelions with little ill effect. In fact, the greens would probably do him, no lover of vegetables, some good.

Whatever you think of dandelions, I submit that it no longer makes sense to spray for them, given the many questions about the health effects of herbicides. Lawn companies will say that their sprays are perfectly safe. I say: Why chance it? Even if you don't have children playing on your lawn, you probably have pets and neighbors and passersby. Someone on the block probably has asthma. Is a perfect lawn worth the risk to them?

If you hate dandelions, really hate them like my mom, a blogger is hardly going to change your mind. But for goodness sake, consider digging them out instead of spraying.

—Christopher Weber