In Praise of Dandelions

When they were little, my children would pick dandelions by the armful. They’d load them onto the backs of their tricycles, weave them into gold-and-green crowns, and bring me bouquets – grasped in small hands and presented with proud grins. It didn’t matter much that those clutches of dandelions soon wilted, even when placed into cups of water – there were always more yellow blooms where they’d come from.

Some people hate dandelions to the point of waging (hapless) war against them. This is something I’ve never understood. Dandelions are hardy and sunny. They’re among the first blooms to pop up each spring, when nature’s palette is quite bland, and will propagate well into summer, after other (less resilient) blooms have arrived to fill the landscape with color. Whether it’s a single dandelion smiling upward along the front porch or an entire field of them reaching for the sun, they seem happy flowers.

Plus, when they’re done blooming, those sunny disks transform into wonderful, orbicular seed puffs. I don’t care how old you are, blowing into those puffs to watch them disperse seems irresistible. Unless, I suppose, you’re one of the people at war with dandelions.

For a few summers during my Colorado tenure, I worked mowing lawns for a friend’s company. Mostly, we took care of vacation homes – giant houses used for only a few weeks of the year and kept pristine for all the other weeks. There was one house, on “The Bench” overlooking town, whose owners rarely (if ever) visited during summer. But they insisted every dandelion hiding in their lawn be plucked or poisoned.

I couldn’t understand the painstaking search-and-destroy missions we conducted every week. The people were never there to SEE the dandelions. And the thing about dandelions in lawns is that when you mow the grass, the flowers get lopped off, and everything is just green; you wouldn’t know the dandelions were even there unless you really looked.

Of course, I don’t welcome dandelions in the garden and pull them up using the special dandelion-digging tool that reaches deep into the ground to – hopefully – extract the entire root, lest it re-sprout. But I leave the rest of them alone.

I don’t eat the dandelions – root, leaf, or flower – like some folks do. Nor do I use them medicinally or ferment the blossoms into wine. I just like how they look – bright, happy, undeterred by the mixed feelings they instill in humans.

Especially this year, when spring has been slow to settle in, and sunshine frustratingly fleeting, I’m glad to see the dandelions and their golden happiness spreading through the greening fields. If I close my eyes and turn my face toward the spring sunshine, I can picture my children, when they were very small, handing me bouquets of what some would disdainfully call weeds.

Those were some of the sweetest flowers I’ve ever received.  

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the May 24, 2019 issue of the Littleton Record.

Flamboyant Summer

It is probably because a full one-half of the northern New England year is devoid of most color that I crave the flamboyance of summer.

From the time the last leaf blows away in mid-October until the first brave blooms poke through the cold ground in April, the landscape’s palette is constrained to dull browns, gold grays, and stark white. I love winter and snow. But by the time I turn the calendar to April’s page, when I’ve had my fill of skiing and every roar of the furnace coming to life causes me to groan inwardly, it seems impossible that the world beyond the windows will ever move from cold, bleak hues to the fullness and heat of summer colors.

I am not the only one who misses the color and rejoices at its return. Before the snow has entirely disappeared from every shady crevice in the yard, many of us are potting hardy pansies to place by the door, selecting the season’s seeds, and plotting the colors we will bring to our porches and gardens, just as soon as the sun is warm enough and the days long enough.

Several years ago, on my way to work each day, I passed a somewhat shabby house. The clapboards could have used a fresh coat of paint, and even the surrounding neighborhood seemed tired. Come summer, though, the little house came alive, its porch bursting with countless hues as flowers spilled from hanging baskets and planters on the steps, any blemishes camouflaged now by the myriad of blossoms.

So many houses, from the grandest to the humblest, are transformed by flowers in the warmest months. So many of us spend a good bit of cash and countless hours planting and weeding and looking after the plants. We tend perennial beds and marvel as the dull, tired, stick-like stalks cut down last autumn swell into voluptuous vegetation and bright blooms. We fill window boxes and porch planters and hanging baskets with color and foliage and fullness. We cut back the smiling pansies when they get too leggy and deadhead the petunias, hoping to coax them into blooming well past midsummer and toward fall.

Downtown planters cascade from light posts, overflowing with buoyant blossoms. Bridge railings are draped in flower boxes, with spikes of color reaching upward and sprays of ivy flowing down. Businesses brighten windows with lively geraniums and cheerful impatiens and trailing vines imbued with color.

At my home, the crocuses come first, then the daffodils, their bright pastels in the still-chilly air heralding the return of color. Antique lilac bushes bloom purple and sweet-smelling along the driveway in late May, preceding the pink-tinged white of apple blossoms humming with bees. The lupines arrive in June to fill the fields with purple and indigo and the occasional pink. Through the rest of the summer, wildflowers pop up among the fields’ tall grasses, some familiar, others surprising us with their blooms. Big, orange lilies grow tall outside the kitchen window, where small jars of flowers – wild and cultivated – stand through the summer above the kitchen sink.

Our front porch holds a small pot of pansies and a large planter of mixed blooms. Last year I added window boxes to the upstairs railing, filling them with vining petunias and bright snapdragons, adding a bit of color higher than any ground-dwelling plant can reach.

The perennial garden out front opens with purple, as the flag irises unfold in the early days of summer. The garden marches on to orange-yellow day lilies, wispy pink astilbes, and subtle green lady’s mantle. Later there will be gold-and-brown rudbeckia, pink sedum, and the tall, yellow, late-blooming stalks my mother calls outhouse flowers (because they grow high enough to obscure a privy).

In the heat of summer, I try to appreciate each bloom, every peony pop and burst of bee balm, the brightness of begonias and zestiness of zinnias, lacy-full globes of hydrangea and nodding sunflowers heavy with sunshine. I store some of that happy glow of color in the summer-loving corner of my soul, saving a bit of the brightness for those cold days to come, so that I can remember in the absence of color that winter’s severity will – eventually – blossom into summer’s welcome flamboyance.  

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul,posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the July 25, 2014 edition of the Littleton Record.