On dandelions...

Dandelion Energy

The dandelions are having a field day in my garden, and, truth to tell, I love their perseverance and joyous abundance. One could do worse than follow their example. They bloom where they are planted - betwixt and between rocks, in the middle of flowers beds (well, they are flowers!) - anywhere they happen to fall in their teensy seed state. And what a sense of humor! They snuggle up next to my prized plantings and challenge me to figure out how to loosen THEM without doing harm to their bed mates.

I went around last week digging them up while they displayed their cheerful yellowness, convinced I was beating them at their game of Go Forth and Multiple. How is it that I never noticed that just because you pluck them as blossoms, they don't die as such? No! They transform themselves into a fluffy afterlife even as they lie tossed in a heap where I left them to die...and with the first gentle breeze they are off to be born again.

I think that I will bow to their insistence and acknowledge them as full, contributing members of my garden - just as I have with the wild violets that paint my garden a vibrant purple. They thrive without any help from me. And who am I, anyway, to call them unfit to live in a "proper" garden? Who, indeed...