A Weed By Any Other Name

Okay, I will admit it. I love dandelions.

I am told I shouldn’t, yet like most things that I am told that I shouldn’t do, I tend to do. I don’t mean to, it just sort of works out that way. I love Wikipedia’s description of a weed. “Weed is an everyday term used in a variety of senses, usually to describe a plant considered undesirable within a certain context. The word—commonly applied to unwanted plants in human-controlled settings, such as farm fields, gardens, lawns, and parks—carries no botanical classification value, since a plant that is a weed in one context is not a weed when growing where it is wanted. Indeed, a number of plants that many consider weeds are often intentionally grown in gardens and other cultivated settings. Less commonly, the term is applied to any plant that grows and reproduces aggressively outside its native habitat. The term is occasionally used to broadly describe species outside the plant kingdom that can live in diverse environments and reproduce quickly, and has even been applied to humans.”

I particularly like the line that it is a “weed” when it isn’t wanted in a human controlled setting…” what? that made me smile a little. We “humans” are all about control sometimes aren’t we?

It isn’t just that they are pesky that make me like them so much – Wikipedia goes on to say, “Weeds generally share similar adaptations that give them advantages and allow them to proliferate in disturbed environments where soil or natural vegetative cover has been damaged. Different types of habitat and disturbances will result in colonization by different communities of weed species.”

Let me break that down for you, these cute little irritants can bloom wherever they are planted. What is not to love about that?

Dandelions are uses in herbal remedies… every part of the “weed” is uses from its root for medicinal teas to its greens. Even the flower is used for Dandelion Wine. Yet, most of can’t want to yank it from our yard or skirt some zapper juice to get rid of it….

Yet, I love them. I love how happy they seem no matter where they find themselves rooted, and believe me, I have seen them rooted in some very precarious placed, and yet their sweet happy yellow faces just seem to smile up at you..

One of my favorite things to do is to snap one up that has gone to seed… Puff my cheeks up with air and blow the seedlings to kingdom come…. usually my hubby is squealing in the back ground.. NO………………………..yet, it just has to be done.

My life feels like that of the dandelion. I work hard to grow where I am planted, I am not always embraced in some human-controlled environments (insert evil laugh), and I love that the gifts that God has given me help give me the “Adaptation to proliferate in disturbed environments..” again, the evil laugh.. No seriously, I love that the gifts I have been given, allow me to go into a variety of situations and share the gifts I have been given.

Lately I feel a little like God swooped me up… just as I have gone to seed…. puffed his cheeks full of air and BLEW……scattering me in a million different directions just to surprise me in the spring, when all is revealed what has taken root and what has not.

I am not sure why I have been thinking so much of the dandelion of late, but I have. Perhaps it is because I see them every where, in the season of change and I can relate to that. They remind me that they are about to take flight, waiting for the winds to come and relocate them into a new opportunity, but they have to be  patient. Endure some of the elements of winter and animals and……………yet, their day is coming… Hoping against all hope that they land in just the right place.

So I guess I would say that A weed by any other name.. would be a medicinal flower in the right garden, wouldn’t you? The Ode to a Dandelion – happy flight!