As the temperatures finally started to rise here in western Washington, I thought Andra Lawrence’s humorous essay about her annual plight with Dandelions would be the perfect piece to usher in the season of gardening. “The Enemy” was first published in the Writing Sister’s anthology, Writing In Place: Prose and Poetry from the Pacific Northwest.

Andra was a charter member of the Writing Sisters (our writing-critique group started in 2002) and kept us amused with her dry wit and clever prose, capturing a variety of life’s idiosyncrasies from the wiles of Mother Nature to challenges of family life and the workplace.

To this day I can’t see a dandelion without thinking about Andra!

The Enemy

A surreptitious invader lurks in my neighborhood. He’s a showoff at times but lingers like a dormant virus in winter. Even under a blanket of snow, he’s plotting how to outrace the crocus to spring. Each January, I make my annual resolution to defeat him: he won’t outsmart me. After all, I have high aspirations for my yard. I dream of an emerald-green lawn framing beautifully spaced primroses, hellebores, daffodils, and tulips. How envious my neighbors will be! Instead, as soon as snow melts, my yard becomes a nightmare, plagued by a perennial enemy, the daring dandelion.

In January, I target him with low-tech tools. I wiggle a hand-held, officially labeled, chrome-plated dandelion weeder into the cold gritty soil of the dusty parking strip. The hardscrabble reluctantly gives in. I taste the dirt that flies in my face as I pull mightily against his root. Partially victorious, I progress to the front lawn. My digger breaks away a chunk of grass; my fingers successfully extract a few roots. In retaliation, the nearby dandelions appear unfazed.

In February, I expect the constant rain to soften the dirt. Shortly, I realize that gluey mud has sucked the dandelion’s roots deeper. By March, even barren dirt has suddenly sprouted dozens of weeds.

By May, as temperatures rise, the dandelions have spread. In the morning, zig-zaggy leaves inch up. I renew my eradication efforts. I pinch each visible bud. I think I may have won the day. But as the sun reaches noon, one shiny gold flower after another taunts me.

What will it take to be rid of them? I grasp my trowel. I dig deeper and wider. I grab a pitchfork to loosen them from their comfort zones. There! Take that! Larger and larger holes appear around each root. I keep hoping to capture every darn weed and dump them for the last time in the yard waste bin. What more can I do?

And what do I do about the holes I’ve dug? In June, the lawn mower’s wheels limp in and out of those holes. Do I fill them with soil? Seed? Manure?

As summer progresses, I see that my neighbor Bob has mowed his dandelions, as he does every six weeks or so. The flowers that have gone to seed fly freely across the driveway. My other neighbor, Michael, has a “live and let live” policy: if it’s green, let it live. I, on the other hand, take each dandelion as a personal affront. I vow to stop every one! Then my neighbor Paul recommends pouring white vinegar directly on the weeds. I pour. The dandelions don’t react but the healthy grass (around the holes) turns yellow.

In July, I weed some more. Within a week some golden petals have reopened with white hair! Mature flowers have burst into lethal globes of spiky seeds, sticking out of the lawn like my own gray hair in the morning, pointing in all directions. Trying to get the upper hand, I close my fist around each spiny puff and pull it off. I know that when just one dandelion’s seeds fly away, he recruits generations of sympathizers to populate the earth. I cannot let that happen. I dig again. I will not let this stubborn weed defeat me!

By August, when the grass has dried and only dandelions remain, I realize I need either a better strategy or a better attitude. But I foolishly persist my digging through September.

Little do I know that the clever weed has one more trick in his survival guide.

Just when I think I may be winning the competition, I discover a saboteur in the family. Sophie, my five-year-old granddaughter, runs through the unmowed school yard across the street. She gathers dandelion puffs into a bouquet. She brings them to me, proudly showing me her

“wishing flowers,” as she calls them. She carefully holds a bunch by their reddened stems, then ecstatically blows each one.

Sophie pirouettes with joy as she makes her secret wishes. The puffs she’s freed take flight, scattering like sneezes over my front lawn! Her brown hair, mostly out of its pony tail, glitters with errant seeds. Her face lights up as she twirls, unaware that she is propagating my sworn enemy. Graciously she offers me a stem. “Make a wish, Grandma!”

— Andra Lawrence

Andra received her BA in English, with a minor in business administration, at the University of California, Los Angeles. As a volunteer she was often asked to help write marketing pieces, press releases, and newsletters. She worked “permanently” in an administrative capacity for some large corporations including Humble Oil (now ExxonMobil), Motorola, Merrill Lynch, and Starbucks. For many years, however, she preferred moving from one company to another as a temp, wearing many hats in many places. Stories about her temping experiences may show up in a book someday.

In 1996 she started writing for fun and profit. Her fellow writers and Write on the Sound conferences inspired her to keep writing. Some of her nonfiction articles were published in the Edmonds Paper (predecessor to the Edmonds Beacon), the Edmonds Enterprise, the Seattle Times, and Quilting Today. In 2012, she won a corporate T-shirt from Ireland as first place in a legal department’s limerick contest at Starbucks.

Now retired, Andra has branched out from journalistic nonfiction into fictional short stories and memoirs. Thanks to the motivation of NaNoWriMo, she is also working on her second novel. (The first one is still in a drawer.)

Writing has often been pushed aside by volunteering for her church and community, family activities, and her quilting and gardening hobbies. But the Writing Sisters keep nudging her back to the pleasure of crafting stories.

Andra Lawrence grew up in California, lived in Texas and Arizona, and 28 years in in Edmonds, Washington before finally settling in Anacortes, Washington with her encouraging devoted husband, Richard and near her sons, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter.