I was driving last week to my gym.  Sometimes it takes 12 minutes and sometimes 20.  The road has heavier traffic and Amazon is partly to blame.  Not the Amazon of South America, but the one with a newish warehouse on the same road that offers same-day shipping on some products.  It’s a love/hate relationship.

It was a slower than usual day on that road.  One where I had time to look at the surrounding buildings and fields.  A mix.  One large field in particular was pure gold.  Millions and millions of Dandelions.  Often another love/hate relationship.     

For someone in pursuit of a pristine, carpet-like, green lawn, that would be a nightmare.  Weeds.  Weeds that would surely go to seed and spread like wildfire after lightening in a summer storm.  

Weeds.  A very large category and one that is mainly determined by beauty and not by substance.  What is a weed?  Wikipedia tells me it is a “plant considered undesirable in a particular situation.”  Undesirable.  What does that mean?  It means unpleasant in general.

Unpleasant.  Sometimes this is learned through first hand experience.  And sometimes it is taught.  The Dandelion is certainly not unpleasant to hungry bees.  The roots can be helpful in natural medicine as well.

As I was stopped in my vehicle, I looked to my left at the field of gold.  All those Dandelions.  My HOA does not permit them.  I use my weed whacker at home to keep them in check.  But as I looked longer and marveled at the blanket of yellow, I remembered.

I used to love them.  Yellow was my first favorite color.  I’ve had many, but yellow was my first.  And I could pluck them and trace them along items to spread the color I loved.  They were flowers to me when I was young and innocent and loved most things.  Yellow flowers that smiled with the sun.

Those same flowers would turn to white puff balls.  As an adult, when I had a large lawn, I would cringe at those.  They meant more and more weeds to deal with.  I have a small lawn now.  Not big enough for a gas mower even.  But I still have the Dandelions.  And I now remember when they were not weeds at all.

They were  once wishes that could come true.  I loved plucking them as a small girl.  Holding them up to my face.  Closing my eyes.  Thinking of a wish.  Sucking in my breath and holding it.  And then blowing the white puff ball into the universe to spread my wish and hope that it would come true.   

I think about how fragile some plants are.  They need this soil and that light and this amount of water and Goldilocks weather.  And how expensively replaceable those plants are.  And then my little Dandelion who is fierce in all weather and will grow from a crack in concrete.  The same Dandelion that will keep growing back unless the very root of it is eliminated.  Strong.  And then I think what would I like to be?  

Would I like to be a plant grown in a nursery?  Beautiful from someone else’s care or would I like to be a hardy Dandelion that grows freely from concrete cracks and raises my sunshine face to the sky and eventually entertain wishes for those who need them?

I think I choose the Dandelion.  And I feel like I am lucky enough to have a sea of them as friends as well.