Have you clocked it yet?
It’s the fourth week of May when suburban lawns should be knee high with urban wilderness for the bugs and bees.?Waving grasses, clover, daisies, and dandelion. ???
Dandelions are prolific across much of the world.?A very common weed; but one that needs to be celebrated and encouraged. ?Their bright yellow blooms offer bees the first sips of nectar as they foray into the sun-warmed air of spring.?
During a poetry workshop, run by Kris Johnson for the Mslexia Salon, participants were asked to choose a flower.?I chose the dandelion.??The flower acted as an external probe to evoke internal memories and emotion.
It emerged that my relationship with the dandelion probed at a bygone era and the loss of innocence.?The adult gardener, who curses any weed invading the vegetable plot or flower bed, was once the child who blew the fluffy seed head in an attempt to tell the hour - time after time.??To the adult, the dandelion signifies neglect; scruffy verges and unkempt plots. But which child can resist picking a bunch of pretty dandelion flowers? Laughing, I had blown those seeds to my children too.
Moreover, as I sat and reflected, maybe this weed represents a wider loss of folk knowledge and nature connection in contemporary society??‘Progress’ has shed the need to forage, except on specialist walks and workshops, and with it, the curtailment of intergenerational nature knowledge.?
Somehow I knew that the dandelion had much to offer, even though I had never bothered to make use of it over the years.?It was the inherited knowledge of my childhood ramblings and imbedded in the narratives of children’s books.?Dandelion wine and ersatz coffee.?Back in the 1970s, we had joked about one of mother’s friends, a slightly eccentric woman, who made us collect dandelion leaves for salad when she visited.?It’s rabbit food for lunch!?
But she was right.?A simple Google search will throw up multiple uses for the dandelion.?The leaves, sap, flowers, and root, all have health value.?Nutritionally it offers vitamin A and C, potassium and iron.?It is an antioxidant, and may have the potential to reduce cholesterol, blood sugar and inflammation.?The health claims are wide reaching, although the scientific evidence is limited.??
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However, dandelions like the sunshine.?As the lawn grows knee high, this highly versatile ingredient for the kitchen table may diminish in the grassy shade.?This weekend I’m going to make a dandelion zone in a sunny spot of the garden, and grow this medicinal herb for the coffee pot, salad bowl and its wider culinary uses.?
In blowing the dandelion clock this year, it is telling me not the hour, but to make the time to connect with the natural world in a new way.
Further reading:
President of the Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation (CIHT) and Mott MacDonald Professor of Future Mobility at UWE Bristol
2 年Beautifully written Juliet and at just the right time of year. Funnily enough my children and I also recently looked up on Google about eating dandelion leaves, having recalled a memory from long ago when I once tried them as a substitute for lettuce.