Dandy sign of spring
“Well, hello there,” I said as headed out the door to walk the dog.
There in the grass along the sidewalk was a first, smiling sign of spring. A single dandelion had poked its yellow head above the green. After that long, cold and snowy winter, the world was finally waking up.
As the days passed and the temperatures warmed, I saw the bright little heads everywhere. The grass along the bike trail was dotted with them. A farm had sprouted so many dandelions the hillside appeared to be wearing a golden veil.
“I don’t understand why people hate them so much,” I told my friend Gina. We agreed that a field of dandelions looks like a starry sky.
“My grandparents used to pick them and fry them to eat,” she said. I was reminded that my own grandparents ate the leaves, too – washed and tossed into a ceramic bowl with oil and vinegar and some sliced, boiled potatoes.
“I think the potatoes were to cut the bitterness,” I said.
I don’t eat them, but I like to see them, an opinion that makes me something of an outlier up here in the suburbs. Here, the aesthetic preference is for lawns that are perfect green carpets, as similar as possible to a PGA golf course. I’ve known men who’ve spent whole Saturday afternoons digging the dandelions out by the roots. For about fifty bucks you can buy a claw-type tool that allows you to extract the flowers without bending over.
Less analog approaches involve herbicides. Up here on Mount Crumpit the grounds crews come around every spring to spray something. We’re assured it’s safe for dogs, but I do wonder.
As I look out my office window right now, I see the yellow dots in the yard. Soon enough the mowers will come, and they’ll be gone.
I live in a condo community that adheres to the mandate of perfect green lawns, part of the overall uniform aesthetic. (The first few months I lived here, I had to look at the house numbers to find the right one.) For a monthly HOA fee of about 200 bucks, I get fresh mulch, trimmed trees and rid of the dandelions. It’s one of those silly cultural norms that takes hold and can’t easily be eradicated – like long, painted fingernails, blessing a sneeze, or avoiding white before Easter.
We’re forgetting about the pollinators. This time of year, the sides of the bike trail are buzzing with bees. Also, dandelions are reliable; the thing that makes them hard to get rid of is the thing that makes them helpful. Their long, tenacious roots stabilize the soil.
Come summer the yellow crowns will turn into puffy globes. Make a wish, we would say as kids and then blow the seeds into the wind.
I don’t like fake or dried flowers; ever since my regrettable dried hydrangea phase 30 years ago, I never have them in my house. I would rather have a single fresh daisy in a bud vase.
Or a couple of dandelions. Yesterday, I went into my yard and pulled a few of the tallest, reaching deep into the grass to get the most stem. I brought them in and put them in a jelly jar of water on the counter.
By evening, they’d wilted, their heads dropped as if sad and dejected. But outside the window, in all the wild places safe from landscapers, I can still see the happy, yellow stars. Whole constellations of them.