“A weed is but an unloved flower.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

For more than a year now, I’ve been studying the beauty of dandelions.  I’ve watched their life-cycle from the first tender shoots of Spring to the vibrant yellow flowers of early summer, from flower to seed head, from seeds in flight to the star-shaped base that remains when all the seeds have flown.  Again and again, from thaw to freeze, these wonderful flowers appear out of nowhere and add a touch of color to my life.

When I first learned of dandelions, I was only a little girl.  I loved to pick them and carry fistfuls of them indoors to my mother.  I noticed that they didn’t seem to last very long.  Barely had they been put in a small vase or glass of water, and they would be missing.  As I grew a bit older, my mother confessed that she had pollen allergies and could not tolerate them in her kitchen.  Besides that, they were weeds.  Weeds.  Before long, I learned that weeds were bad things — things to be uprooted and eliminated from a perfect lawn.  I turned my back on the dandelions and left them behind.  They were weeds; and weeds are to be shunned.

As I grew up, I learned other similar lessons about life.  There were people who, like weeds, were to be removed from our perfect world and not given attention.  Like weeds, they were undesirable.  We should only cultivate relationships with our own kind — the kind we plant and nurture — and we should build fences to contain our perfect garden, a garden without weeds.

It isn’t easy to be a weed, constantly dodging the gardeners’ gloved hand or the sharp edge of the hoe that wants to uproot you.  Maybe that explains why the dandelion shows its yellow splendor for such a short time.  It can be a dangerous thing to show your colors when you are a weed.

What I have learned about weeds, both plant and human, is that their roots are strong and they hold fast to the earth.  No matter how hard the gardeners might try, these deep roots regenerate and keep the weeds alive.  Beyond the surface color that I enjoy, the deep beauty of weeds lies in their strength, their passion for living, their tenacious desire to be seen in all their splendor.  It is Autumn now, and the flower beds have mostly been put to rest for another year.  We have removed the skeletal remains of the summer blooms and laid the soil to rest for the winter; but the weeds go on.

Wherever I walk, I see them.

In spite of the cold winds and the bitter nights, they continue to color my world with their beauty.

Do you still think that “weed” is a four-letter word?

Open your eyes!  Look past your preconceptions.  See the great beauty in loving the flowers.  Erase preconceptions and prejudice.  Celebrate all the beauty life has to offer.  You may find it shining in the most unexpected places!