Well, if Emily Dickinson can like dandelions... | Daylily Blog on Choices

There is enough room at the table of gardening for everyone to have their favorites - favorite flower, favorite colors, favorite smells and sounds.  This power of choice and gluttonous variety is probably what drew me to daylilies.

There is a massive display on Emily Dickinson at the New York Botanical Gardens and I find it refreshing to hear that she loved dandelions.  Many of her works (close to 2,000 poems in total) spoke to flowers or gardening.  If you remember any of your high school literature, Emily wasn't the happiest writer in the anthologies we were forced to read (and grew to love), which makes her affinity of dandelions all the more appropriate.  A garden thug, the dandelion does not boast a following of societies and dedicated clubs who cherish its' existence.  But Emily did.

I have met gardeners who find the smell of jasmine both intoxicating and disgusting, and those who never saw a rose they liked.  How sad to find the morose in inherent beauty - not everything is meant to be judged.

The good news is, whether it is in gardening or in life in general - there is something out there that can make your heart flutter.  You just have to let it happen.  I know that's easier said than done - especially with gardening.  We're always trying to make the right choices in color, texture, form, substance, size and drought tolerance. 

Emily Dickinson had it right. She celebrated the minute, the discreet, the often morose and the even dandelions in all their weedy glory.

I'm coming to realize that one thing does not have to posess all of these qualities, but just do one or two really well. That one shining thing that makes a flower or plant truly distinct. That distinction earns the plant its real estate in my garden - doing one defining quality really well.



Here's my wish that you find something on your table that makes your heart flutter...

All photos from the 2008 MCDS Daylily Show in Columbus, Ohio.  This year, it will be held at the Franklin Park Conservatory on July 11, 2010.   I'll be there!  Google it.