May 27, 2015 Article

The Old Coot doesn’t see a weed, just beautiful yellow.

By Merlin Lessler

There are a lot of spring blooms out there. Tulips, daffodils, lilacs and my favorite, dandelions. Most people frown on them. I know what that’s like, being an old coot, I get a lot of frowns too. We’re both considered weeds (which, The American Heritage College Dictionary defines as undesirable, unattractive or troublesome). But really, if you get down on your hands and knees, and look at a dandelion, putting aside you prejudice for a minute, you can’t help but marvel at its beauty. Such an intricate and lush petal structure. And that color, as brilliant a yellow as you can get. Besides, how can you hate something from which you can create wine or spice up a garden salad? And, that never needs tending, watering or fertilizer to make it bloom?

What I like best about dandelions, is when they blanket an entire landscape with their beaming faces and a gentle breeze causing them to sway in unison; it’s on par with a starlit sky on a clear evening. So, where does it come from, this distaste we have for the lowly dandelion? The dislike is so strong it compels us to rush to Agway for something to annihilate the yellow blossoms with, or to get down on all fours and painstakingly dig them up, spending hours crisscrossing the yard until every last one has been eradicated. But, they come back! They have strong genetic survival characteristics. One, is their ability to lure young children to pick them when the petals have transformed into white, gossamer seedheads, called blowballs. The kids can’t resist waving them around or blowing them apart, insuring a new generation of blooms will rise again. 

And, that brings me to why I think a lot of people, a lot of adults, hate them. It’s those white seedheads, the petal remnants. They look old, dead, colorless and useless. Kind of like us old coots. So they get sprayed and dug up.  I experience the same distaste from people whenever I wander into a public gathering with a pair of glasses on the top of my head, a second pair in front of my eyes, my pants on backwards, coffee and mustard stains down the front of my shirt, a set of car keys in my hand and interrupt the mood by yelling across the room to my friend Daren, “Hang on a second; I can’t find my car keys!” That’s when I truly know, I’m a dandelion.