Mr. Washington was a hard-core lawn
freak. His yard and my yard blended together in an
ambiguous fashion. Every year he was seized by a kind
of herbicidal mania. He started fondling his weed-eater
and mixing up vile potions in vats in his garage. It
usually added up to trouble.
Sure enough, one morning I caught him over in my yard spraying dandelions.
"Didn't really think you'd
mind," says he, righteously.
"Mind, mind! -- you just killed my flowers," says I,
with guarded contempt.
"Flowers?" he ripostes. "Those are weeds!" He
points at my dandelions with utter disdain.
"Weeds," says I, "are plants growing where people
don't want them. In other words," says I, "weeds are
in the eye of the beholder. And as far as I am concerned, dandelions are not weeds -- they are flowers!"
"Horse manure," says he, and stomps off home to
avoid any taint of lunacy.
Now I happen to like dandelions a lot. They cover
my yard each spring with fine yellow flowers, with no
help from me at all. They mind their business and I
mind mine. The young leaves make a spicy salad. The
flowers add fine flavor and elegant color to a classic
light wine. Toast the roots, grind and brew, and you
have a palatable coffee. The tenderest shoots make a
tonic tea. The dried mature leaves are high in iron,
vitamins A and C, and make a good laxative. Bees
favor dandelions, and the cooperative result is high-class honey.
Dandelions have been around for about thirty million years; there are fossils. The nearest relatives are
lettuce and chicory. Formally classed as perennial
herbs of the genus Taraxacum of the family aster-aceae. The name comes from the french for lion's
tooth, dent de lion. Distributed all over Europe, Asia,
and North America, they got there on their own.
Resistant to disease, bugs, heat, cold, wind, rain, and
human beings.
If dandelions were rare and fragile, people would
knock themselves out to pay $14.95 a plant, raise them
by hand in greenhouses, and form dandelion societies
and all that. But they are everywhere and don't need us
and kind of do what they please. So we call them
"weeds," and murder them at every opportunity.
Well, I say they are flowers, by God, and pretty
d--n fine flowers at that. And I am honoured to have
them in my yard, where I want them. Besides, in
addition to every other good thing about them, they are
magic. When the flower turns to seed, you can blow
them off the stem, and if you blow just right and all
those little helicopters fly away, you get your wish.
Magic. Or if you are a lover, they twine nicely into
a wreath for your friend's hair.
I defy my neighbor to show me anything in his yard
that compares with dandelions.
And if all that isn't enough, consider this: Dandelions are free. Nobody ever complains about your
picking them. You can have all you can carry away.
Some weed!
BC Babylon: To thine own self be true
BC Babylon: No skinny dippin'...
BC Babylon: ...And git yer little one to stop piddlin' on the bears...
Many thanks to Esther Cosner -- whose precocious child, 
Destiny, is pictured here -- for locating mass dandelion breaks for me amongst her BC collection; Many thanks to Jon, LuAnn, and Mark for delivering said mass dandelion breaks into mine hands.
I think the person who designed Reunion Tower in Dallas was a dandelion fan
Dandelions for Gourmets
A Homeopathic Dandelion site
Dandelions, by Eve Bunting. Illustrated by Greg Shed.
The Health Benefits of Dandelions, By Peter Gail, Ph.D.
To The Sunflower Patch
"god bless the rain, and the stormclouds that bring it.
god bless the music, and the voices that sing it.
god bless the ones who sing everything wrong.
god bless the creatures who do not belong." -- dav pilkey
Other misunderstood gifts at the Thistle Patch:
Destiny
I think the person who designed Reunion Tower in Dallas was a dandelion fan
Dandelions
