Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 2, 1994                   TAG: 9405030010
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WEEDKILLERS MAKE LAWN CARE SO EASY

They have these pleasant, well-dressed persons who don't sweat showing you how easy it is to get all those weeds - some of which grow up through the driveway - with a single blast of Deathocide 3.

This guy in newly pressed khakis just squirts some of this stuff on a dandelion, and it doesn't know what hit it.

And there are enough dandelions around your place to suggest seriously that they are mutating and will eventually pile all of your things on the lawn, throw you out and take over the checkbook and get behind in the car payments.

So you leap from your couch and buy a gallon of this stuff and laugh like a mad scientist on the way home thinking about what you're going to do to the dandelions.

Then, a number of things these sweatless persons don't tell you about begin to occur.

By the time you get this stuff home, you are worrying about what it might do to the birds - although there was no mention of birds in the commercial.

Then you dream that night that the stuff gets out of hand - kind of like the Blob - and kills all the trees, flowers, shrubbery, grass, dogs, cats, squirrels, rabbits and night crawlers on Happy Highfields Road. Not to mention all of the residents past 60.

This is called environmental awareness - which is something you didn't have to worry about 50 years ago. In those days, people dug dandelions up with a table knife. Made wine out of 'em.

Never mind. When you read the label - which you ought to do regardless of how you feel about the environment - you find there is no way you're going to use this stuff anyway.

The label puts so many limits on its usage that you will decide to just let the frost get the dandelions.

It will hurt clover. No sane person wants to hurt his or her clover. Sometimes in August it's the only green stuff you've got.

You can't spray it when the weather is hot. It is late April, and it appears that every day through Thanksgiving is going to be in the 90s.

You put it on the shelf beside the gallon of muriatic acid you borrowed the time the dew washed all the paint off the house and onto the stoops.

You were afraid to use the acid, too, which probably says that some people should just stay on the couch.