"Dandelions are flowers, too!"

It's funny what things we identify as enemies. Dandelions, for instance. Mushy daylilies or slightly putrid rose petals are easy to categorize as loathsome, but dandelions? Dandy lions with yellow manes? Puff balls that predict love's truth? Let me praise dandelions. They carpet the fields with a yellow so loud it croons in the sun. They're streetwise and hardy, thriving in sidewalk cracks as easily as they do in a topiary garden. Their greens taste good, and they make a light, summery wine. Heaven knows, they're persistent. In late fall, when all the color has drained out of the grass, the brilliant flowers have vanished like a mass hallucination, and even the trees have forgotten how to green, one still sees dandelions gamely blooming. Their long, thick taproots grab deep and send off fine rootlets, divining water other shallow plants miss. They're fun to play with when they go to seed, because the lightest shake or breath launches their parachutes. They're quaintly named. The French thought their serrated leaves looked like the teeth of a ferocious lion, or dents de lion, which the English misheard as dandelion.

And yet, only poison ivy is more despised. Why are dandelions regarded as the pinwheels of Satan? Perhaps because they're too short to qualify as model flowers. The same shape and yellow on a lanky stem – coreopsis, for example, we find classy. They multiply fast because they gush with nectar, and manufacture loads of pollen, so all sorts of insects visit them and spread their pollen. But they're also self-contained, and if no insects were to visit they could still produce seeds without pollen. One way or other, they quickly dominate a yard. I suppose they're too ordinary to prize. Common as ants, they're easy to overlook. Some people may feel they ruin the solid green methods of the lawn. I've watched many homeowners patrol their lawns like serial killers, flashing a pair of scissors with which they methodically decapitate every dandelion, and still they search for more trophies. I'm tempted to stop at those yards, perhaps holding a placard that says "Dandelions are flowers, too!"

~Diane Ackerman in Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden

Dear God, in Your loving plan, everything is Your gift to us and nothing is too ordinary to prize.  Help me to welcome and to cherish all the beautiful dandelions in my life.  Amen.