What grows in the summer - #171

Not always what we like.

We’re now over a year of raising a child with no childcare while both working multiple jobs. I am proud of us, but I’d rather not be. One of the daycare facilities here reached out this week to say they might have a spot opening up later this year or early next — would we like it? I laughed. We would love it. Until then, I am learning to sometimes let the essays be short so the days can be long. I hope everyone had a wonderful solstice. I know we’re two days past, but there’s still time to take today and ask yourself: who do I want to be for the rest of the year?

---

It is hard to argue with a dandelion.

They are gripped to their position, taproots deep and stiff, and it takes only a fraction of the root to grow again. Pervasive and invasive, they coat any disturbed ground—the edge of the road ground up from the plow, the pasture trod and tread by horse and marmot. A sea of yellow, and then, just seeds. Seeds caught in the breeze, seeds dancing among passing feet, seeds blown for wishes, seeds sinking right where they grew.

We pull the oxeye daisies and we pull the road flax. We pulled the mustard and bull thistle. We pull whoever else makes the list. But we cannot pull the dandelions. We can only do what we can to help the native flowers grow.

Last week, I went on a local plant walk learning about the various uses of plants here, including dandelion. The ever edible dandelions. You can eat the flowers, the leaves, even the root. You can use the seeds in bread and pancakes. You can make crowns and flutes and paints. But not me. No, I am allergic to dandelions. I can walk among them, I can pick them and play with them, but I cannot eat them lest the right side of my face puff up like a popover.

Maybe it’s the right side because that’s where I had surgery on my salivary gland. Maybe not. We’re not doctors, just dwellers, wondering, wondering.

But I can eat the bluebells and the salsify flowers. I can eat the mustard on my way to tossing it out. And I can certainly nurture the rest.

The wildflowers are just emerging. No one is promising a good year for them this time around, with below average snow the winter prior and a dry start to summer. But there they are, in their valley immemorial.

Wildflower season coincides with another season here: overlanding. Parades of Jeeps line our dirt road, driving through our houses of few to climb up the mountain pass and over to the other side. It’s an easy drive with the right vehicle, a foolish one for the wrong vehicle. More than one hapless driver has been mercifully towed back down.

They rumble with their gas tanks and roof racks past our houses and into the woods to be revealed 20 minutes later on the vista like ants in a row, marching along the exposed side of the mountain. Some of the Jeeps are outfitted safari style, with bench seating in the back, so their passengers’ hands can be free for selfies and road sodas. Sometimes they wave when they see me, baby on my hip, dog at my feet. Sometimes they don’t.

Every year, there are more and more. They root in this valley they don’t call home again and again and again. And I can wave my fist and stomp my feet, but it doesn’t stop the spread. They still come, the Jeeps and the weeds. All I can do is plant flowers, pitch signs. Wave and wonder, if for all the noise and dust and speed and debris, they can see what I see: something rare, something precious. A place where the wildflowers still grow.