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4 C 2000 •LONG LIVE THE WINDY- PUFF! One man's weed is another man's flower Anon A recent headline in The Globe and Mail shows just how disconnected we've become from the planet we live on. SPRINGTIME BATTLE BATTLE WITH YELLOW MENACE MENACE MAY BE OVER it reads. It's talking about dandelions. dandelions. Dandelions? Yellow menace?? menace?? The story under the headline crows about a team of Canadian scientists which has discovered a naturally occurring but hitherto unno- ARTHUR BLACK ticed fungus. The scientists believe this discoveiy could be a knock-out punch for the dandelion. It's a naturally occurring mould which attaches itself to the dandelion . plant and feeds off it until the dandelion dies. Once the dandelion dandelion is gone, the mould dies too. Sounds ideal - until you ask the question: how come we're killing dandelions in the first place? Do we kill them because they're ugly? Hardly. The dandelion is a beautiful plant, be it young and golden or old and silvery. Because we think they're noxious? If so, we're pretty stupid. Native people have known for eons that thç dandelion is powerful medicine. Even the Puritans purposely packed dandelion seeds when they came to Ralph Wood, had his name drawn at the Great Canadian Town Band Festival which won him a T-shirt signed by all the members of the Plumbing Factory Brass Band. Festival T-shirts are still available at The Orono Times office, for $15 each, or 2 for $25. North America so that they could take advantage of it's medicinal benefits in the New World. And the beneficial properties properties are considerable. In fact, it may just be the most nutritionally nutritionally potent plant growing inside or outside our gardens. Dandelions are full of iron. They provide more potassium than bananas; more beta carotene than carrots; more lecithin than soybeans. Other countries recognize the dandelions value and deliberately cultivate them as a kitchen staple. And why not? The leaves of a young dandelion plant are delicious - and about ten times more nutritious - than lettuce. Dandelions make excellent wine and you can even grind up the tap root to make a coffee coffee substitute. So why do we hate this plant so? Partly because of our lawn fetish. Somewhere along the way we developed the completely completely irrational notion that we ought to surround our houses and public buildings with a monotonous carpet of undifferentiated green. Something that grew really fast so we could spend lots of leisure time humping roaring, fume-spewing lawnmowers over it, trying to keep it Short. The dandelion scoffs. We spend small fortunes on lawn rollers, fertilizers, aerators and mutant grass seed, only to wake up one morning to an invasion of gaily waving yellow yellow heads that seem to say "We're baaaack! " Then there are the herbicides. herbicides. North American lawn freaks spend millions of bucks each year mainlining chemical poisdns designed to eradicate the dandelion and its kin. Nobody's quite sure what else we're killing, but hey - as long as we get rid of those damn dandelions, eh? Maybe that's the good news about this new anti-dandelion anti-dandelion fungus - at least it'll get us off our herbicide addiction. addiction. My guess is it'll be about as effective as all the other things we're tried in our 'war' on the dandelion. Which is to say, not very. Call it a butferchin, a windypuff, a fairy clock, a blowball, a dumble-dor or an Irish daisy. Call it what you will, the dandelion is here to stay. -E You can't keep a good weed down. :■>!!< Clarington Fire Calls The Clarington Fire Department responded to the following calls during the period of July 3 to July 10, 2000: 7 property fires; 2 prefire prefire conditions; 7 false fire calls; 2 public hazard calls; & rescue calls, and 21 medl- cal/resuscitator calls. Sports Editor Rosey Bateman NTYPOOL MEN'S Game Results for Sunday, July 9th Blazers over Pitbulls . 19 -18 Slime over Mudhens 25-12 J.P. Sports Bar over Black Jacks 25- 4 Generals over Titans 25-10 J.P. Sports Bar over Slime * 24- 8 League Standings TEAM GP W L T RF RA +/- PTS Mudhens 9 7 2 0 142 103 39 14 Blazers 9 6 3 0 128 105 23 12 J.P. Sports 9 6 3 0 190 99 91 12 Generals 9 6 3. 0 184 100 84 12 Blackjacks 9 5 4 0 131 150 -19 to Slime 9 5 4 0 89 107 -18 10 Pitbulls 9 1 8 0 85 153 -68 2 Titans 9 0 9' 0 68 200 -132 0 Schedule for Sunday, July 16th 2:30 pm Slime vs Generals 4:00 pm .Black-Jacks vs Blazers 5:30 pm Pitbulls vs JP Sports Bar 7:00 pm Titans vs Mijdhens NOVICE GIRLS Win Loss Tie Toronto Dominion Bank 3 4 1 Ozimek Industries 1 6 1 Hampton 7 ' 1 Tyrone 4 4, PEEWEE GIRLS I Roy's Enterprise 3 3 MacDonald Plumbing 2 4 1 Grayon Industries 1 .5 ■ 1 Tyrone 5 . 2 • Orono 6 ■ 1 Hampton 2 4 BANTAM/MIDGET GIRLS Grant Morris Travel 8 1 Hwy 115 Truck & Auto 6 1 Solina 1 5 4 Lange's Photo 5 ' 4 ' Solina 2 4 2 Tak Masters 2 5 • Bowmanville Kinsmen 2 7 Frontier RV 0 8 m "We're here BÜ to support you!" DURHAM Local service & sales DURHAM COMPUTER SYSTEMS for your personal computer needs. COMPUTER SYSTEMS (across from CIBC) Hours: Monday to Saturday 10-6 (905) 987-2047 • durhamcs@home.com m