Ode to Dandelions

Several years ago, when my husband and I lived in Ohio, we lived across from an elementary school, which had a huge lawn facing our house. It was lovely in the summer to see the sea of golden dandelions bursting from the ground. It was a veritable carpet  of gold.

Being from N.Y.C., I knew that dandelions were considered a weed by some—like that other maligned flower, Queen Ann’s Lace-- but not that they were ubiquitous.

I said quite seriously to my husband that if we  ever lived in a place without dandelions, we would need to buy some seeds and plant them.

This earned a humorous chuckle.

Yesterday my husband and I were sitting by the Susquehanna, meditating.

And right before my foot was a dandelion that had gone to seed, its silver globe-shaped body on the stem where the flower used to be.

I picked it up and looked at it.

What I saw was amazing, for there, within the outer filament of the head of the seed pod, was a intricate pathway of extending filaments.

It looked like a star, encased in a delicate web.

Now if God had wanted to propagate dandelions, he could have found a more efficient way to do it than to leave it to the chance that the wind would blow the seeds of the filaments away where they would take root and reproduce.

But the ingenuity and beauty of the dandelion seed argues a divine instinct for beauty if we only acknowledge  it.