My friend Cindy and i were walking through the woods on her property in an effort to check out her new bee boxes where she had thousands of healthy and docile honey bees buzzing about, doing their thing. It was an exciting development on her homestead. There was an article about it in the local newspaper. She had cleared a little area for them on her property where they looked to be settling in quite nicely. A nearby beekeeping mentor would teach her the ropes and soon honey bees would be a rewarding addition to her property, especially because she had fruit trees that could benefit from the presence of busy pollinators. It was an exciting development and i definitely wanted to see the bees, so off into the woods we went.
We came out of the thick woods and into a somewhat cleared area with more sunlight and realized that there were bull thistles there that had grown taller than a human. They were probably seven feet tall. I’ve never witnessed them this tall but in the woods nobody needs to mow the grass so perhaps this is their natural height if everyone were to leave them alone. Looking at all the thousands of seeds launching themselves into the wind, i was glad we werent on my property. I go around regularly with the scissors. You have to cut the blooms off before they turn white if you dont want a thousand of them. You could pull them up by the root but they dont come easy and with the amount of them i have, it would take me months. So this was cool, but also terrifying, considering the amount of fully developed seeds leaving the plant as we took the picture.