The Last Dandelion
The function of a plant and a blossom is to produce good seed and cast it forth where it too can continue the process. Parents have a similar role.
A good beginning is important to a good conclusion.
As much as I might feel there are good places and "less good" places for a dandelion to thrive, I have to admire their productivity and their persistence. It's their nature.
The recent drought in America has the potential to persist, but it didn't seem to really phase any dandelions that I know.
Now the prime season for dandelions has passed. They have stored nutrients in their roots for the coming season.
This "last dandelion" will likely scatter its seeds by virtue of a cold winter wind, perhaps even a blizzard. But its good seeds will welcome the moisture to come from the winter's snows. They will welcome the strong winter winds that may carry them far from their parent plant.
Spring will find them ready to grow and repeat the cycle, if good fortune has blest them to come to rest where they have any reasonable chance of success.
Just as with a dandelion, we humans tend to have whiter tops the more we age, and before we wither away to place our brightest hopes in what rests of us in the ground for some future spring, and Easter blossoming.
By then, if we have performed our proper function, our own children (if we were blest to have one or more) will have matured (perhaps even far from us) and will be taking the best we offered them into the sum of what they offer their children and those around them.
For us to have done any less, is to be less than the "last dandelion."
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Copyright 2012 Demas W. Jasper All rights reserved.
And what of the future?
These will scatter far and wide, may they be persistent and productive.
"Improve each shining moment. Don't let them pass you by."
- A Haiku - Alarming Spring
What wakes the sleeping earth from its slumber when spring comes? For everything there is a time and a season.
