You are the dandelion growing through concrete cracks,” Christine Vatters Painter The Wisdom of Wild Grace.
Can we see that lone yellow dandelion cracking the concrete? Do we see ourselves so strong?
The dandelion, cultivated in several countries as a herb, was brought to North America by early Spanish and English settlers. It came as a propagated plant, but proliferated in its new home as a wild flower or to some, a mere weed. But of all the flowers that attract children, the dandelion must be the favorite.
William Wordsworth wrote, “…A host of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”
To me a daffodil is a domesticated flower planted in a proper bed. To the poet, they were growing as wild as bluebonnets in Texas, sunflowers in Kansas or Carolina Jasmine (Jessamine) in Georgia.
When I was a child, we - my mother, daddy, grandmother and I - lived in a two bedroom, one bath rental house. My dad kept the grass cut, but the only flowers growing on the property were perennial ones. Perhaps, people before us had planted them, but my folks just left them alone - an ever spreading bed of tiger lilies in the back, morning glories intwined in the front hedge, four o’clocks along side the house, honeysuckle clinging to the back fence and of course the ubiquitous dandelion which Daddy mowed down every time he cut the yard.
We children delighted in sucking the nectar from honeysuckle flowers. I also remember being proud that I could identify morning glories, which bloomed with the dawn and closed up before dusk and four o’clocks, a plant that bloomed late in the afternoon and closed with the morning sun. I especially remember the delicate afternoon blooms because the four o’clocks seemed as happy as I, once I could go back outside after a four-hour stay in the house during the summer.
Because parents had no protection for their children against polio, we were kept in the house during the hottest part of the summer day in Texas. One of my friends had contracted the crippling disease. Her mother claimed that she had seen a fly on the banana my friend was holding and she had taken a bite before her mother could grab it away. Parents experienced deep seated fears against the dread disease. Even so, it was nothing like we’ve experienced with COVID-19. And a vaccine against polio did not surface until I was grown.
After my parents bought their first house and we moved, my mother spent hours working her flowerbeds. Her manicured gardens were beautiful with well cultivated flowers. She loved elephant ears and caladiums, named day lilies and cockscomb. Mother was proud of her beds, but something in me missed the free spirit of the flowers growing rampant around our yard when I was a child.
Of course, even the most expensive, most exotic, most eye catching plants and flowers always began as growth in the wilds. Botanists, horticulturists and gardeners, even back in ancient times, began nurturing and developing wild flora, transforming it gradually from its bare essence into dramatic color and size in bud and bloom.
Many of us find pleasure in touring famous gardens like Callaway Gardens here in Georgia, Bellingrath Gardens in Alabama, Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, South Carolina. Yet we take note of the Cherokee Roses and blooming dogwood trees in the woods and irises and lily pads growing in waterways.
The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in 1987 declared the first week in May to be National Wildflower Week. All year long, let us not only appreciate this natural growth, but also its effects on humans. There is an innate strength, beauty and determination in these wild plants that thrive in a natural setting. We want the same qualities for ourselves.
And thus we validate Painter’s observation about the dandelion growing through the crack. With the same fervency of a dandelion, we want to break through those abstract barriers, real or imagined, that hold us back. The wild flower is far more than a beautiful bloom; we long to capture its resilience as our own. As Lady Bird Johnson said, “Where wildflowers bloom, so does hope.”
2021
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