Once there was a little dandelion growing in my raised flower bed by the patio. I didn’t realize what it was until it got bigger and bigger and started blooming mightily. I love that dandelion plant and I liked to sit on our porch or the deck in the cool of the morning, sipping my morning coffee and watching the sun come up. The beautiful dandelion blooms were beaming at me through the porch railing. They made me very happy to see them there. Sometimes I said to them, “Good morning pretty flowers”. And they nodded their heads and said, “Hello”.
One day Pablo came to cut the grass. Later I went out on the porch as he and his son started to leave. He proudly showed me the flower bed next to the patio, how clean it was. I was shocked and asked, “Where is my dandelion plant?”
He looked at me amazed and asked, “You mean that weed”.
And he showed me the poor dandelion plant on the grass all wilted and ready to go in the garbage!
I said tearfully, “That isn’t a weed. That is a dandelion flower.”
I turned to go back in the house crying.
Pablo said, “I’m sorry, Mis Lois, I will plant it again. Don’t worry, it will grow back.”
I said, “No it won’t. It will never grow back, because it is such a big plant. Never mind.”
I went in the house so sad and tearful. I didn’t look out there again. Later after Pablo left, Rocia told me he had re-planted the Dandelion. I shook my head, and knew it would not grow.
Well a couple of days later, I went out on the porch to have my coffee and saw the dandelion was bright and chipper and blooming away. Their blooms smiling at me again.
Well that was in the middle of the summer. She had bloomed all summer. Even when her life was uprooted. Here it is in mid August. The dandelion kept blooming all this time. Making me happy each day.
Today I went out on the deck and saw the dandelion is all wilted and almost dead. I think her life is at at end. She was pulled up by roots and left for dead, but then she was resurrected and planted again and bloomed two more months. I wonder why.
The lesson I learned was that like that dandelion we sometimes are uprooted and wilted and don’t want to get up anymore. It is not our fault, someone or something caused us to be pulled up, roots and all. But then God has something planned for us and maybe there is a purpose for us to live again. That dandelion had a purpose, and that was to make me happy, even though this summer has been miserably hot and I have been lonesome, the beautiful dandelion blooms remind me of beauty on this earth.
But now it is time for her to go back to the earth in anticipation of next year’s growing and blooming. She was blooming where she was planted.
I had the same experience when grass cutters removed my perennial blue Lantana that was dormant for the winter by pulling it out by the roots. They didn't replant it.
The flower pictured does not look like a dandelion (dandy lion). I have not seen them very much here in Texas, but they are the scorge of green lawn fanatics in the upper Midwest the yellow flower stage is attractive, but that flower quickly turns to a ball of white fluffy seeds that we as kids used to blow from the stems to spread the flower on the wind.
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