These dandelions are tall, graceful, sprightly things, leaping up towards the sky, defying the lawn mower and enticing the toddlers. These dandelions have stems that you can braid together. Stems that are easily six inches long, towering far above the lowly leaves and the grass.
These dandelions wink knowingly, forecasting lemonade and fireflies, nodding towards the porch swing and whispering of guitars and margaritas, of ice cream cones and barbecue, of squirt gun wars and bubble wands. They glow, fluorescent yellow, and if you pluck their glorious crowns, twisting fluff in fingertips, the sunshine spreads to your fingertips as well. Dandelions shorn, their locks sit in a bowl on tabletop, then I bake them into cookies to fill bellies and fatten joyful souls.
Now that crop are all grey headed grannies, bobbing in the breeze. We pluck them and initiate our little ones into the summer ritual. Dandelion seeds float through the breeze. Did God design dandelions to be irresistible as part of their protection against eradication? Our crop will be mighty and plentiful next year, that much I know.
, too - which, by the way, I washed in the washer. They had a distinctly funky smell, but there were SO many that I quailed a bit at washing them by hand, so I dumped them all in and I put them through a series of rinse cycles with just water, then bleach, then just water, then vinegar. A few of them, I've noticed, still have a bit of a musty smell, but I know for a fact that they are CLEAN, so I'm ignoring it. ;)
