Tag Archives: dandelions

Refresh. Refresh.

One of the gardens, mostly refreshed.

But also, my screen time on my phone is up over last week by more than 60% on average and it’s only Friday morning. You don’t want to know the hard numbers from Tuesday and Wednesday.

Some things don’t need to be neat and tidy. I like the dandelions in the soil around the Brussels sprouts with a carrot laying on top.

Their roots come out eventually, going into a saved glass jar to wait for a future glass of tea. The greens go in my eggs if they’re just my eggs. If the eggs are for sharing, they feed the compost just as well.

Other things need to be immaculate or immaculately accurate. Surgeries. Library shelves. Counting rooms.

I do hope that, eventually, people stop imagining dandelions where there are none. I do hope, eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later, this country can refresh itself. Removing the noxious and watching the beneficial move into the open space left behind.

I do hope. Still.

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Offerings.

Jade green beans offering future pods. To the neighboring plot’s Bermuda grass? To the rabbits outside the fence? Or perhaps, to me. Or the birds if I’m gone.

Every so often someone tells me they don’t have a green thumb. Sometimes my thumb cracks and splits in its brown stained skin, but rarely is it green. Those rare times are paired with a green index finger because I’ve been squashing harlequin beetles and their drunken juices of plant blood paints my skin for a time.

Recently a woman I know said the same as an excuse for not knowing what a corn ear worm was. It reminded me of something I read less recently about how common it is now to preface a statement with a qualifier of a group one belongs to. “As an X person, I think Y.” Or, as a person with A experience, my perspective on this is B.”

The piece went on to discuss how such a qualifier seems to negate the ability to enter into discourse. I cannot begin to disagree with Y or B, without it being taken as an affront to the person’s experience as a person of X or A.

And so this woman qualified her lack of knowledge in the tamest way, and while it isn’t the same line of thinking as the piece I read, it does remind me how somehow, often women, provide an excuse for their curiosity or lack of knowledge. Why is that? What conditioning created that habit and why does it persist?

Anyway. Double digressions entwined in a mess.

I don’t feel as though I have a green thumb. I feel as though I offer seeds to the soil and watch them burst, wobble, or waiver. If I think I start to know better, nature will usually bop me for my arrogance. Then follow the bop with an offering of her own in the form of new knowledge of how she works, or when to step back, or simply a beautiful “weed.”

Like this dandelion wisher joining the melon blossom and onion seed head in a trio of round smiles.

Crispy

I found my way to the garden on a frosty morning for a quick look about and weed.

The soil was crunchy past 1/4″ down. The stirrup hoe pulling sheets of earth along. Occasionally, a saucer of soil dragging an onion from its slumber.

The weeds in the pathways look a lace pattern, their name “henbit” sounding a fit.

They, as their dandy lion neighbor, not minding the season’s change as does the persistent potatoes I was hoping to harvest for Christmas.