At this time of year, it’s hard not to think of dandelions. They’re everywhere! In my neighbor to the east’s pollinator garden, in my neighbor to the west’s lawn that’s cut by a crew every Thursday, and in my front lawn that I occasionally mow with a battery-powered Ryobi.
Didn’t that Euell Gibbons guy eat dandelions?
That’s the official story, 9. Euell Gibbons was the author of Stalking the Wild Asparagus, a book that talked about harvesting and eating wild food.
He was one of the references for my eighth grade science fair project.
I remember that, Lily. You worked way too hard for the “B” you received. It was always the showboats who got the A’s at the Science Fair, the ones who built paper mache volcanoes and poured a mixture of baking soda, vinegar and dish soap down a chamber in the middle to create a lava flow.
It looked quite fake.
I guess the part that impressed the science teacher was the chemical reaction between the baking soda, vinegar and dish soap? But let’s not dwell on that, a small injustice compared to thousands of things that will happen later in our combined life.
Foraging is the contemporary term for harvesting wild food. It even happens in big cities, where a dandelion springing up from a crack in a sidewalk is fair game. The use of dandelions in viticulture extends to literature, notably Ray Bradbury’s 1957 book Dandelion Wine.
Dandelions: Immortalized in Ray Bradbury’s book as a source of wine. . .
The book was inspired by his grandparents and their lawn in Illinois. The grandfather in the story mows the fresh dandelions every day and makes them into a bottle of wine, labeled with that date. When the weather turns cold he opens a bottle and sips a warm summer memory.
So the wine is a metaphor?
Exactly, Lily. Dandelions created a metaphor in your life, too, though you may not think of it this way yet. Remember in seventh grade when you and your friends would sit on the lawn between the junior high classroom building and the gym and make chains out of dandelion stems during lunch break?
Dandelions make a chain that binds the decades. . .
Of course I remember. That was just two years ago.
Some 50-plus years later the realization came to me, just today, in fact: the chains we made back then still bind us. I remember those friends vividly, and those sunny days at the end of the school year. How we styled our hair, the miniskirts and pastel sweaters and high-waist stovepipe pants we wore, which boys we liked but were too shy to tell them. Whenever I see one of these girls- -most of them mothers and even grandmothers now- -there’s an echo of those years we spent together in Port Townsend.
Not everything about dandelions conjures nostalgia for me. They are easy to manage in the front yard. Just a handful of them that I’d just as soon mow as pull up, because the pollinators are fond of them and I want to keep the pollinators happy enough to do their magic in the back garden. At this time of year I let the dandelions dominate the area where I plant flowers and vegetables.
Dandelions: A forest of them gone to seed in the back yard. . .
Wow, that’s a lot of them! Do you still pick them and blow off the fluffy part? That’s really fun, like they’re magic.
Thanks for the reminder, 9, I will definitely do that today!
On the upper part of the back yard, the section I laughingly refer to as the lawn, I’ve been removing the dandelions as they come up. Somehow, this seems right for the decks, the patio, and the area between them where more refined activities take place. Morning coffee, evening wine, cat naps in between.
Dandelions, or, in some instances, a dandy tiger tabby. . .
Even so, I find a rogue dandelion raising its golden head on a daily basis. These, sometimes, are simply to be enjoyed.
If only everything in our world was as useful as dandelions. . .
