Thanks to daughter Abez for the snazzy Spring layout.

If croci are the harbarger of spring, what flower signals the comming of summer.....dandilions.

By Tuesday I saw a few of those hearty God-given pernnials lining the edges of sidewalks and roadbeds. By Thursday, there were more of them peeking out across lawns, and by today, Sunday there are fields of them.

I love to garden and I know dandilions are a cursed weed to all lovers of green lawns, but the kid in me remembers dandilions as free flowers you could pick without getting yelled at. Dandilions still make me smile.

Do you remember the bouquets of dandilions you picked for your first love, your mother? You were so proud of the bright fuzzy yellow blooms. Mother gently took them, giving you a gasp of appreciation and a kiss, and put them in a teacup of water. But... remember your disappointment a few minutes later when you noticed the flowers had closed up and looked like ugly lumps of leaves stuck on the end of green drinking straws? Disappointment. But your wise and loving mother told you it was okay, she loved them anyway just because they came from you.

I think instead of spending millions of dollars to eliminate dandilions, we should just give in and try to make them bigger, heartier and able to stay open after cutting. Is this possible? Well, we can put man on the moon and invent frostproof strawberries, I think we should be able to domesticate the noble lion of the flower world.

But, until that happens, just smile at the brilliant yellow flowers that decorate all God's creation, and remember that God sees beauty in the weed as well as in the rose, and loves the saint as well as the sinner.

I leave you with the words of Christ as found in Matthew 6:28-30

Consider the lillies (or dandilions) of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the furnace (or cut down with a lawn mower), shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?