Dandelions are the anarchists of the garden. I’ve loved them since I was a child back in the seventies, when everyone else in the neighborhood thought they were an annoying little weed, spoiling the emerald green lawns they worked so hard to maintain.
I could never understand that. How could anyone not love their beautiful sunny yellow heads, dotting spring-green lawns and roadside strips alike with joy?
Our community garden here has had a bumper crop of dandelions this spring, much as we did in the preceding year or two. The start-and-stop spring onset we’ve been experiencing since that time may have helped: a few brief days of unseasonably warm, even hot, weather seems to get them going all at once, as they give their all over two or three days duration, then hanging on when the cold suddenly snaps back and preserves the fat yellow blossoms for days on end.
They have cycled back and forth this way all spring, popping up again and again every time I thought for sure the warm weather was in to stay.
But they always fly off eventually, turning first into round moon globes, as the seeds, each with their tiny fluffy white parachutes facing out, form a nearly spherical seed head, bobbing on long green stems in the wind, until they let loose and, once set free, fly off like little stars, to carry their blessing to suburban lawns and gardens and tough city sidewalk cracks and vacant lots.
Now that the solstice has ushered in the summer, the time of the dandelions is past, until the fall brings back the cool weather. Only a few tough stems are still hanging on, waiting for a fiercer wind to carry their little stars away.