Be Your Own Kind of Beautiful

Blowing dandelions ( or correctly as I just learnt from Wiki - 'parachute' balls ) is the ultimate spring activity.

I think I have photographed every flower that can be found along any of the walks I take.
The latest obsession has been dandelions. There is just something so whimsical and childhood envoking about dandelion heads. I wish we had been on a soft rug, lying in the shade in a field having a picnic...

but it was in an empty house lot on a busy road on our way home from school we picked and blew dandelions till our hearts content. Not all the girls were interested as it was pretty hot, if we could have picked them and taken them home we would have, but they were just too fragile.

So soft and fluffy waiting to float away on the wind.


Am I a dandelion head barely keeping it together? With one blow from the winds of change do I scatter into a hundred pieces and fall apart? Am I that fragile?

OR

Am I a hundred little pieces floating on the wind carrying love and care to those I touch? Able to go and do many things at once. Able to embrace the challenges that push us in many directions.

Able to float and flutter and sail happily along

Willing to accept the change from bright flower to scattered pappus (the hairlike parachutes) Change is unavoidable... we just become different versions of ourselves. Hopefully stronger, better, more. As the parachutes of the dandelion create more flowers - hopefully I create more too.

More love, more living, more passion, more kindness, more charity, more patience, more tenderness, more laughter. MORE and MORE.

Are Dandelions weeds? Or a thing of beauty? Reminds me of the New Era Poster - Be your own kind of beautiful. I had that poster on my bedroom wall as a teenager. Hopefully I can teach my girls that. There are many types of beauty. There are behaviours that makes one more beautiful. We are all a bunch of mixed flowers, each with their individual beauty.

Be your own kind of weed (of the plant variety not the drug :)

Today..... I am a dandelion

* oh and did you know Dandelions are edible in their entirety? *