Sounds like a risky operation compared to the payoff, but maybe it was worth it just for the satisfaction. (-:

Sounds like guerilla gardening at it's finest!! Nice work, well at least tell those good guys nice work (tee hee!)

Glad you guys don't know where I live. If you came into my yard and cut the thistles, you'd be getting a visit from the police.

Maybe the neighborly thing to do would have been to visit with the new neighbor and explain your concerns.

Thurston, Surely you don't mean to say that you let thistles go to seed in your yard? Unless you own four hundred acres in any direction, you really would be a bad neighbor.
I didn't cut them down. FWIW. I expect his landlord, who owns the fields around that house and who cuts hay from those fields, might have been the 'cut or else' instigator.

I need one of the "good guys" to visit some of the fields around my place. You'd think that the hay people would want to cut the hay BEFORE the dang things went to seed, but that's not how it happens most of the time. One field, a few miles away, was especially bad last year. It was like 50 acres of pure thistle.

Yes and no. I do spread new seed each year where I want them. But just as they finish blooming, the flower heads are cut off into a plastic bag and disposed of. So it's a controlled seeding and I dig up a lot of them when they sprout in the Spring.

I grew up digging them out of cow pastures.... maybe that's why I like them now. I also have a patch of Queen Anne's Lace and butterfly weed.

I'd gladly let any of you come pull up the poison ivy that seems to have made a resurgence this year.......

Thurston,
Any chanch you're successfully growing artichokes? Similar plant, but delicious. My seedlings got wiped out by a hail storm, but I will try them again, next year.