dandelions
When did the dandelion become so evil?
Emily Dickinson so loved her dandelions that she transplanted one into a pot and tenderly tended it in her conservatory. She “pressed a dandelion and tied a ribbon around it, enclosing it with a poem.”
The Dandelion’s pallid Tube
Astonishes the Grass,
And Winter instantly becomes
An infinite Alas —
The Tube uplifts a signal Bud
And then a shouting Flower, —
The Proclamation of the Suns
That sepulture is over—
(F1565)
Now most people despise the valiant dandelions and spend hours trying to eradicate them from their lawns. Instead, we rejoice in hopes that many bees derive their first nectar and pollen from them. Honeybees are having a rough go of it these years and many beekeepers are losing half their hives each winter. We lost our two hives in one winter and now we are eagerly awaiting the delivery of two nucs in early May.
[Marta McDowell, Emily Dickinson’s Gardens, (McGraw-Hill, New York, 2005), p. 38]
[…] two new bee nucs arrived this week. A nuc (short for nucleus) contains one queen, 5,000-10,000 bees and the […]