Magical Magnificence of Dandelions
A Year of Noticing - Day 243
Last week I saw a young child blissfully blowing puffs of dandelions around her front yard. As soon as one puff was empty, she would pick another and giggle with delight as the seeds went flying!
Part of me remembers that delight as a child. The joy and satisfaction of blowing a full, round dandelion puffball until not one seed remained clinging to the center of the stem… and now I generally spend most of my time trying to dig out the deep roots of the dandelions while they are still in their full yellow bloom to avoid further spreading of the seeds!
The way dandelions take over the grass and the garden, in a never-ending battle has led me to forget the beauty and joy of dandelions.
Now that my children are older, they prefer to kick the dandelion puffballs like a soccer ball, watching it explode into bits and fly in various directions. I cringe each time as I can envision the hundreds of dandelions I’m going to be pulling next month!
Today, however, I noticed the beauty of the dandelions.
Standing tall above the grass, it almost looks like a magic wand. And it really is amazing, the structure of this miraculous little being!
These plants are made to propagate! Each tiny little seed, can fly freely on a windy day. In flight like a parachute, might travel a kilometer from the original flower!
Before it blows away, when you look closely at the structure you can see the magnificence…
Within the spherical head of each dandelion, similar to sunflowers and pine cones, it is been determined that this is one of the many miraculous structures of nature that follows the Fibonacci sequence, which maximizes the number of seeds in a limited space. The Fibonacci sequence, where each number is the sum of the two numbers preceding (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc…).
Today I noticed that I was able to let go of seeing dandelions as “ugly, problematic weeds”, and I was able to truly appreciate the magical, magnificence of their beauty. It reminded me of many quotes including, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and who has decided that these are not creatures of beauty.
When I re-connect with nature, there is beauty in all things! And perhaps that is the most beautiful thing of all!
xo
For all the past musings in A Year of Noticing, click HERE.