Dandelion seed

   May 15, 2008 – Since I never thought much about dandelions, I am surprised by some of the e-mail I’m getting. Dandelions, I am told, are not only a humble weed, but a despised one, and many gardeners and lawn-lovers poison them routinely and work hard to eradicate them. Since I am not a gardener and have not learned to care about lawns, I never thought about this, and don’t quite know what to make of it. “I love our pictures,” Andrea e-mailed me from Minneapolis, “but this weekend, I will spend much of my time killing all of the dandelions in my garden, as they do not let other flowers live.”
  Looking inside these weeds, there is an extraordinary amount of life, beauty and energy, and I am not sure why anybody would want to get rid of them, although I understand Andrea’s point of view: they are flower-killers. If they threaten beautiful flowers, whose colors I am enjoying, then there is a problem. It seems two ideas conflict head one with one another – one notion of beauty versus another, and which gets to live. As usual, humans seem to win. What makes a rich green lawn more beautiful than a dandelion field?  Us, and our notions of beauty, acquired by culture, advertising and a compulsive need to mess with Mother Nature.
  What does it say about us that we kill these things because they interfere with our notions of order and beauty? Still, dandelions mean more to me now. I guess I identify with them.
 They personify the idea that there is something beautiful inside humbled weeds that is hidden, not perceived.
   Since I didn’t know they were a disliked and often poisoned weed, I encountered them as beautiful, interesting, and am drawn to photographing them. Another example of how photography and story-telling alters perspective. I see dandelions for the first time, and closely, even intimately,  and they tell me stories of beauty, ugliness, life and death, and the relentless ways of the world.
  So I guess we have bonded, dandelions and I. And I suppose if you have bonded with a 3,000 pound swiss steer who drools a lot, why not a pesecuted weed?