Eradicating Bull Thistles

          For forty years I single-handedly kept the Canadian bull thistles from taking a foothold on the gravel road I live on. I dug up every thistle that showed its head or, if my eyes were good, even just its feet. I was the thistle eradicator.

          But thistles love disturbed land. Two years ago BLM did an undergrowth, fire-safety burn along an old logging road close to my home. A few weeks ago, walking along that road, I discovered an enormous patch of bull thistles. Their bristly balls atop thorny stems were just beginning to peak into purple.

        I went home and prepared for battle. I put on my Garden Girl overalls, a long-sleeved denim shirt, my thickest garden gloves, and a hard-hat straw hat. Then, armed with clippers, long-handled shears, and a paper bag for decapitated blossoms, I returned to the thistles.

          Unfortunately, they were growing in blackberries. As I waded through blackberries deep into the thistle patch, I saw that the thistles were growing on such a steep hill that I would slide down into them if I tried to cut them from above, so I slid, stumbled, and climbed down the hill to attack them from below. I was glad for my hard-hat straw hat, since of course the first thistle plant fell downhill as I cut it. I learned how to manipulate the loppers to fell the thistle uphill, into other thistle plants, then to drag it up to the road and go after the round-ball blossoms with my clippers, avoiding barbs. Thistle thorns stab so sharply I think they might have the porcupine's ability to throw barbs into the flesh. I don't think they eject a poison into the skin, but it feels as though they do.

          Entangled in blackberry vines and balanced on a steep hill, I had to be careful not to fall. I am not Brer Rabbit! I also didn't want to drop my clippers. When I did, they disappeared into the undergrowth of blackberries, amid thistles.

Find the clippers

         Have I mentioned the 90-degree heat? Have I mentioned the mosquitoes? Have I mentioned the bear? (I saw him on two different days.) On the other hand, have I mentioned the birds?

         I cut off every head of each thistle plant, then cut every leaf node. I cut each stem every four or five inches. I decimated each thistle plant, working my way up the stem, leaf node by leaf node, snip, snip, snip. 

Any buds that were showing purple or even white went into my paper bag because buds, even beheaded, can still burst into wind-borne seeds.

          I worked four hours a day for three days. I got every last thistle in that patch. I even nosed into the blackberries and cut down the foot-high babies. I might have missed a few, but I'll be back when they've grown big enough to detect in the blackberries. I'll be back.

          As I walked back down the road after my victory, I saw another patch of thistles, not as big but on just as steep a bank and growing not in blackberries but in poison oak. I went after the thistles, anyway. I found another, smaller patch growing in a less steep place and spread out better and not as numerous. They're gone now, too. Later, turning my footsteps down the road from where I emerge onto it from the woods, I found the biggest patch yet. 

I went after it. When it is lying on the ground, I'll walk on down the hill to see if there are more.

           I have filled eight bags with purple thistle blossoms and sealed them tightly. Next fall I'll burn them.

          The question now is whether I should range up the road or down to look for more thistle patches. The question is whether I have taken on a Herculean task. Or maybe a Sisyphean one. Maybe there are more patches in other places that I'll never be able to get to before they start throwing seeds to the winds and undoing all my good work.

          As I fight the thorns and cut down and decapitate the thistles, I know that even if I can't stop the thistles altogether, I have kept hundreds of plants from growing. No matter how many come up next year, there would have been more if I hadn't been the thistle eradicator. The native plants will thank me. All pasture owners in the vicinity will thank me. I thank me. It's a good deed I'm doing.