End Of The Road For All Dandelions

First of all, I hope you all had a good laugh at my expense yesterday (cheaper than Pizza Hut!), and didn't go away with the mistaken idea that Tessa is in my bad books! On the contrary, she's a lovely lady, well worth getting acquainted with if you aren't already. Her beautiful paintings will brighten up your darkest day just as her writing will brighten up your mind and heart.

Now, back to the title. Sadly I haven't just invented an extermination incantation to deal with the little yellow peril, but as it has featured in so many blogs recently, I couldn't let the opportunity pass to ponder once again on its inevitable end - a dandelion clock-cum time bomb... It really is one of the most beautiful spectacles Nature has ever created; spherical, fragile wisps forming their own globe of potential re-birth, but pale and insipid colour-wise. A huge contrast to the vivid acid yellow of its hey-day.

Last year, I invested in a true instrument of torture (for weeds only, may I add). Rather like an overgrown apple corer, the blade on the end of the long, red pole, circles the weed as you push into the earth, then outer lugs lever the unwanted plant up, as a corkscrew removes a cork from the bottle. Providing the ground isn't too rock hard, its a wonderful method of clearing the lawn of weeds, with no back-breaking, stooping required.

But no matter how many dandelions are executed in this way, there will always be some that make it to their 'End Of Their Road' - and turn into those seed laden, life-cycle conclusions.
One grey dawn, I spotted a group of them on the grass verge at the end of my road, as I made my way to work, and the following lines were born by the time I'd walked to the station and caught the train. Once in the office I put them down on paper, little thinking that I'd be broadcasting them around Blogland one day, even as the plants broadcast their seeds around Havant...

Fruition, Perhaps

Ghost-grey puffball heads
of seeding dandelions
shed their multitudinous progeny
to ride the winds of chance
in life's uncertain lottery.

So a poet's multifarious words
float at the mercy of other minds,
perhaps to take root and yield
an unexpected harvest
in some far flung, fallow field
of uncultivated poesy.