This morning the dandelions flooded the fields like doubloons poured from a pirate's treasure chest. They assert themselves into my morning - glowing orbs rolled out into the horizon like a quilt and will stay that way until they are damn good and ready to leave. "Go on. Get rid of me! Want a piece of me, bitch? Yo!" Truth is, I don't want to get rid of you. If I had my choice of "Final Sight", I believe a contender would be the deep purple of the wild, spring violet mingling with the golden manes of dandelions. You make me happy. You assure me of what's to come. What we cultivate is one thing. What's cultivated for us is another. Bring it on! Glad to be here.
It's dusk now, and that golden throw has been transformed into seed pods waiting to take flight in the breezes now forming somewhere far away from here. They will transfix my grandson when, with his very own puff, he blows the pods apart and into the air where he squeals and claps his hands as they join all the others. Their predecessors have taken over the world, and they're on their way. What puts all this in motion, I can't help but wonder, but wonder with no answer, and finally figure, the hell with it, I don't care why? All I care is that I'm here.
Obviously, not every one agrees with my love of a common weed. Find one in Beverly Hills. Yet, why "weed"? Why are the daffodils lining our front walk flowers yet dandelions on the lawn around it be weeds? If I encased a fulsome bed of Lion's Teeth within a nice, white picket fence with a pair of ceramic dwarfs on guard at the gate would they be flowers? There's history here. The dandelion was, for centuries, a valued plant, prized because every piece of it could be put to good purpose - roots to leaves to flowers - medicinal, gastronomical, floral - a plant to be foraged - found everywhere. Poor people could eat it. Polite people could brew it. So, what happened? How did an entire industry flourish solely devoted to hunting down and exterminating one of creation's most prolific, useful, (and some say beautiful) beings? Be objective. We are not talking cockroach here. Look at the architecture of the dandelion's leaf. The domestic uses of its root. The glue that oozes from its stem. Its diuretic properties. French slang for dandelion is "pissenlit" meaning "pissing in your bed". In other words, at some point, dandelions, like the dinosaurs after that meteor struck, disappeared from the civilized world, but why?
Centuries ago when a few men were consolidating astronomical wealth and vast real estate holdings it was considered an ostentation of one's riches to have all the grounds around the lord's estate groomed and fine tuned, and, since there was no machinery to mow it down, how many scores of peasants on their hands and knees did it take, and what a display of plunder and power: an endless expanse of nothing but manicured, green grass which could have been tilled to feed people. Hence, the invention of: The Lawn! And who in their right mind would want weeds on their Lawn? And what is that right mind, exactly? And who said so? And who cares?
