It was a bright kind of day, gorgeous. After a while long wait, the buds finally burst open, the leaves unfurling, in a hurry to catch up. The chlorophyll just flooding the leaves turning them from a pallid yellow green to a brilliant lime green – by summer these will be a deep emerald hue producing the energy for another year’s growth. Amidst last year’s dry litter, flowers push up, in this case out in the open on the edge of the wood, beautiful dandelions. A carpet of spring gold!
Not everyone would agree though. Our attitudes towards these plants have changed from one of valuing them for their nutritional and medicinal properties to one of out right enmity. As we’ve grown away from the land, we’ve lost what our forebears new about them. Worse than worthless to us, they now are an affront to our aesthetic values, a pox on our green lawns. Worse still their prolificacy and hardiness is competition our cultivated plants are not up to – garden woes.
Sadly, they now fit the definition of a weed, viz. “a plant that is not valued where it is growing” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary) – a blinkered view – ask the bees, ask the young rabbits in my back yard.
In this age of rewilding conservation efforts, perhaps we should apply these principles at home and once and for all expunge the term from our dictionaries.
Acrylic, 16×20 on gallery canvas
ISTVAN JOBST FINE ART 