Wait for the right moment: Length of day. Temperature. A drenching spring rain. Two days. From the ground they spring, abundantly, with fortitude. Their numbers shout, no-matter-what-you-do we will out populate your work and survive and win.
Prior to rain, one rises, here and there, and tells all who’ll listen of what is soon to transpire. Rain turns prophesy to reality. By the hundreds dandelions are everywhere. The abundance of flower is such that it is impossible not step upon one during a morning walk across a dew watered field. Their abundance changes the spring greenscape into a landsky of yellow stars.
Dandelions fill the valley, but true abundance comes in the place of disturbance. Native ground allows seed to settle and have life here and there. However, pastures and hay fields where soil is opened by hoof and harrow sanctions exceptional seed to soil contact. The yellow of hundreds of pasture dandelions extinguishes all doubt winter is of yesterday and spring is of now.
Being a wholly edible plant, one would think the dandelion virtuous and desirable. Perhaps it is our local food store privilege. Perhaps it is simple laziness. Perhaps it is desire for an immaculate monoculture green lawn. Whatever the reason, the yellow dandelion flower raises the ire of many.
No ire for the goat though. Dandelions are a goat’s plant of wonder. Entering a pasture after dandelion flowers have risen is a goat moment not unlike that of a child spilling their candy upon the floor after a Halloween outing. Such good life is unbelievable. Such good fortune! The low-lying flower is especially theirs. While sheep will eat dandelion, they have little enthusiasm for its bitter leaf. The low lying character of the dandelion holds little interest for cattle because the distance between nose and teeth is greater than the height of flower and leaf. But for the goat. This is the flower of the gods…mmmm.
The spring dandelion is a bold reminder of life after a long winter. The audaciousness of the lion’s yellow tooth smile beside its gift of total edibleness brings vivacity to sight and belly. Winter is gone. Spring has come. With the pluckiness that comes with others thinking it a lowly weed, the dandelion is nothing if not confident enough to sidle up beside the daffodil and claim William Wordsworth’s poem, I wandered lonely as a cloud, as its own.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils
Chewing the Cud 