BUT, what we came home to is simply mind boggling. When I left for Utah, the yard looked just fine; but when I got back, there were tons of big purple evil cabbages infesting what used to be the green grass. Seriously, some evil scientist decided to punish the people of Texas one afternoon when he was bored, and he created these things--huge purple weeds with painful spines that I'm sure are a cross between cabbage, stinging nettles, thistles, and actual swords.
I was shocked to discover two things during my quest to remove them from the front yard this morning. The first discovery was actually made right away: they do NOT want to be removed, thank you very much! The second discovery was made a while later: the huge, evil cabbages are actually DANDELIONS! You know dandelions, the cute-but-annoying, mostly-innocent weeds that carpet every yard in North America and the U.K... Only in Texas, the dandelions have attitude--big, Texas-sized attitude, complete with stinging spines that I learned to respect after accidentally touching and ending up with an itchy welt. You can tell they're dandelions because the evil scientist perched the cute little yellow flowers on top of each of the small-dog-sized spines.
You know that old addage "everything's bigger in Texas?" They weren't kidding! This mid-western girl has decided that it would have been ok if some things stayed smaller in Texas!
