Los dientes de león son mis flores favoritas.
¿Por qué?
Porque fueron la primera planta que aprendí a cultivar y comer, y porque salvaron a nuestra gente. -- Anon Guest
[AN: Translated - Dandelions are my favorite flowers./Why?/Because they were the first plant I learned to grow and eat, and because they saved our people.]
The tumbledowns are called that because it's easy for everything to -well- tumble down. The only things that grow there are babies and misery. Everybody's hungry all the time. It's still very clean because nobody leaves anything lying around. Not when it could be useful for something.
I learned what a flower was when I saw my first dandelion at the age of twelve. I learned what it was for when a passing student of the bizarre told me two things: dandelions will grow anywhere, and they're edible.
The leaves, the roots, even the flowers and the seeds can become food. I asked them every question because farming them seemed easy. I just had to get the seeds and put them somewhere they could get rain and sun and not get trampled on.
I got an old box that was too decrepit to hold things and not good enough for firewood. I got dirt and shit from the street into it and put it up on our roof where it was sturdy enough. And finally, I got some dandelion seeds and combed them into the dirt I already put aside.
It didn't take long for me to have dandelions. There weren't enough for a meal, but there were enough to make a meal a little bigger. Tray after tray, rooftop after rooftop, crop after crop... my friends and I grew more and more. And we had more and more.
Dandelion flour bread with dandelion flowers is an acquired taste, but it's better than starving. People started picking them out of the commons. People started lining their roofs with trays upon trays of dandelions.
We weren't starving any more. Babies could live to become children. Children could learn some kind of trade. Some kind of skill. We could help each other out of the mire. Even if it was just a little bit.
There was dandelion wine, too. A little something to bring ease to the long and hard days. A little something to bring a stressed soul some peace.
That's why I wear the dandelion as my emblem. Something so low and disregarded, but eminently useful and capable of saving so many. Something so hardy and determined, to make a little piece of sunshine in a cruel world.
Dark places like the tumbledowns need a little light. The light of hope. The hope of a chance. The availability of something to make a meal stretch just that little bit longer.
And if you know what you're doing... they can also be a small medicine.
No wonder they're the Dawn Lord's flower.
[Photo by Natalia Luchanko on Unsplash]
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