The Other - Skip Snow

Mushroom spores on Art Spectrum Colourfix paper
12” x 9” (framed 14” x 11”)
 
Windswept
by Wendy Thornton
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Growing up,  they weren’t allowed to blow the dandelions from their roots. This would propagate these evil plants, spread them everywhere, ruin a perfectly good perfect lawn.  The children would sneak into the yards of their neighbors, steal the fluffy puffballs, and blow them away, like summer snowflakes. 
When the girl grew older, she ran away to a college in the south, where dandelions dotted the paths through the woods between buildings.  She brought the flowers into her dorm room and filled her windows with cuttings. 
An old hippy man down the street would invite her in, make dandelion tea, and play for her his latest LP, the Beatles letting go, Simon and Garfunkel building a desperate bridge, the Jackson 5 promising to be there.  He was so kind, but the tea was awful, bitter, the taste of a dead lime on her tongue. 
Once she had planned to run away, to a place where real snow fell, where the people were brilliant and kind. But the longer she stayed in the land of dandelions, the more she appreciated their delicate realm. 
Later, she grew her own lawn, organic,  edible, free of pesticides and chemicals. She picked the weeds out by hand. At the end of an afternoon of yard work, exhausted, sweaty, she would sit and watch the bees and butterflies bless the dandelions.  Then she’d rise, gather a bouquet of those snowy pollinators, and blow on the puffballs to create more.