Checking back, it appears I’ve often mentioned dandelions. I had been thinking that this year’s crop was particularly impressive, but in retrospect perhaps it is only average. Maybe it is only that I notice their jolly faces more these days.
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Not so long ago, dandelions were disdained as weeds. My parents generation was horrified at the thought of one appearing on their lawns!
When, late in life, I acquired a garden of my own, I was initially influenced by the memory, seeking to create the sort of landscape my mother would have approved.
Very soon it was obvious that this was just one more way in which I would fail ever to measure up to her standards! I allowed slugs to devour the hostas and quickly gave up the battle with weeds which I was never going to win.
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Flowers purchased from a nursery failed to thrive and seeds did not grow, whereas dandelions flourished unaided and in every kind of terrain. No effort required, no maintenance and they are not just perennial, they are eternal.
When seen as flowers, they are pretty. They cheer up any meadow.
Furthermore, they are nutritious and offer health benefits. And of course, they are crucial food for bees upon which human existence depends.
Years ago, despondent after a sad episode with rabid raccoons, I wrote about a particular dandelion:
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It is perhaps a strange memory to hold onto, yet my mind often goes back to that dandelion under the West Seattle bridge. I clearly remember it was growing in a gutter beside the road, trodden on and splattered with mud. The only reason I noticed it was because we drew to a halt alongside while on our way to collect the latest intake of cats.
At the time I was battling depression, grasping at lifelines and that day I said to myself that I could have been that dandelion, that poor unappreciated, unseen flower. It had reminded me that in this world there are vast numbers of people who are little better off than a weed in a ditch. They too are unseen and unwanted. My life was not so bad!
Ever since I was a little girl in Southeast Asia, I had wanted to reach out to people who struggled for survival. I saw that they were no different to me and yet I lived an easy, comfortable life while they barely had enough to eat. I could not comprehend the inequality. I realised, perhaps, that but for an accident of birth, I could have been in their place.
Beggars approached us once and my father waved dismissal, sweeping me into a taxi. I looked from the rear window as we drove off and saw a little girl gazing back at me, crying. It troubled me and the image stuck in my brain where it has remained.
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With all the goodwill in the world, there is nothing I could do, or can do for such people in any meaningful way. I had high ideas about joining the Peace-corps but after college there had to be other priorities. Are such efforts even effective? I really don’t know.
These days I purchase only essentials, but years ago I used to support Fair Trade wherever I could, in order to purchase from artisans rather than big businesses.
Mostly, I can no more help the downtrodden than I could rescue that forlorn dandelion. Does it matter that I noticed, that it made me think? I believe that anything which provokes thought beyond oneself is a positive.
Although I do care about the vast majority of the underprivileged, that poor flower caused me to think in a broader way of life in general, of all the lifeforms that inhabit our planet. I have come to believe that all life is precious. Even that with which we are not compatible.
Previously, I swatted insects without a second thought, but acquiring a garden, this began to change as I took time to observe the activity I saw in flowerbeds and among the trees.
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Since seeing the giant “fromager” (cheese trees) at Angkor, I had appreciated Nature to an extent, but I’d lived exclusively in apartments with little opportunity to commune with the Mother of all things.
All these years I have remembered that those trees were called fromager without ever knowing what they truly were. Then, looking them up, I came to discover that in the West Indies they are referred to by some as Zombie trees because they are inhabited by spirits, whereas in Thailand I recall one time much upset among the staff because a man who had a fit reported that a spirit had jumped into him from a kapok tree. The cause for everyone’s concern was that spirits did not live in kapok trees. This is the interpretation we got and what I had therefore always believed, but after discovering the contrary was true in the West Indies, I explored further and sure enough – Thai spirits do also live in kapok trees.
The kapok tree from which the spirit jumped was nothing like the size of those at Angkor. Large kapok pods contain a silk-like substance, a little bit like milkweed which I discover has sometimes been used as a substitute for stuffing military life jackets and flight suits. Kapok was widely used in Asia for filling mattresses and pillows.
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Until I came to Cambridge, I’d never even heard of milkweed. It is the favoured food of Monarch butterflies and for several years it grew in our flowerbeds but two years ago it seemed struck by some sort of blight and last year we had none near the house although there is still plenty down in the field.
It’s good to know the Monarchs will have food but I so enjoyed seeing the butterflies and caterpillars, following their life-cycle.
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Though I am a hopeless guardian, I have learned a lot from having a garden, not least appreciating that there is beauty even when a flower/ weed is spent.
One needs only to notice.
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When I was young, there was a ‘topper quilt’ on my parent’s bed. My mum told me it was expensive, because it was ‘stuffed with kapok from a long way across the world’. I didn’t know what that was until much later. But I had a thicker quilt on my bed, and she called it an eiderdown. I was a teenager before I realised that it was stuffed with the feathers of eider ducks from Iceland. She still had that eiderdown when she died in 2012. But if had gone almost flat, and she had it folded in a cupboard. I felt sad that I had to throw it away.
Best wishes, Pete.
Oh! Dandelions!
Your comparison of life and the sweet dandelion is beautifully written. Even though we are struggling with the insanely high prices of food, electricity, diesel, etc. … we can still afford these things. I know there are many people who have far less than I do. That’s why I have a ‘Today I’m saying thank you for’ journal in which I write every day to remind myself how fortunate I am.
You cannot help everyone. You have to start from your neighborhood. Be a good neighbour to your cats. plants and weeds alike. Let them live their life. Be good to humans you meet and seek ways to help. Churches often involve in charities and their are other institutions like The Water foundation, which are making a difference by fixing the root cause of poverty (everyone moving to cities for a better easier life). Or you can “adopt” one family to help however you can. Start with one. Spread the word and others will come forward to help others.
There were “fromagers” in West Africa too. I often wondered why the name. It turns out that the wood was used for cheese packaging, particularly camembert as the wood is very light.
Now I understand!