Life's Little Blessings

 Dandelions abound within the perimeter of my vegetable garden. I've allowed them to flourish, for three reasons. First, their taproots go down deep and bring calcium closer to the topsoil where more shallow-rooted garden crops can access it. Second, all parts of the plant can be used both for culinary and for medicinal purposes. Finally, blending a handful of dandelion leaves into a smoothie adds a flavor that is more than reminiscent of dark chocolate. 

Hold on, you say. I didn't click on this article to get a lecture on dandelions. Hang on, because I'm going to make an important point in a couple of minutes that will help shift your perspective on the trials of life.

Back to the lovely plant which is all too often demonized by control freaks and HOAs requiring lawns consisting of grass, and only grass. Until this summer, I hadn't been able to use the dandelion leaves past the month of May, because every year they'd develop powdery mildew. Health experts recommend against consuming leaves with that fungus, as it can cause an allergic reaction in some people. 

Imagine my delight, then, when I went into my garden in the middle of July, hoping but not expecting to find a few healthy dandelion leaves to throw into my afternoon smoothie, and discovered that not a single of the several dozen dandelion plants growing there contained a single leaf with powdery mildew. 

There were two reasons the dandelions were disease-free. This past summer, I decided not to garden. We live in a land-locked area with high humidity and mild winters, the perfect environment for nurturing the appearance and spreading of fungi, such as powdery mildew. I was hoping that if I didn't grow the plants that were helping the fungi to persist - cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers - at least some of it would die off, allowing me to grow less-diseased crops the following summer. Because there were no cucumber plants that developed powdery mildew, it didn't blow around and affect the dandelions.

The second, and perhaps more pertinent, reason for the fungus-free dandelion was that for several months, La Nina took over the globe in all her splendor, bringing an unusually hot and dry spring and summer. It didn't end until El Nino showed up in August and pushed her out of the way. In the meantime, the dry air and dry ground discouraged fungus formation of all kinds, including powdery mildew. 

Temperatures had hit surpassed 103 degrees many days. Going outside felt like walking into a pre-heated oven. The water in the local lake was more like that of a small, stagnant and therefore stinky pond. By late July, probably a quarter of the leaves on the deciduous trees had turned, or were turning, brown. Dried to a crisp. And the wildflowers we'd been allowing to grow in our front yard? They were dead before Independence Day, and the yard was an ugly, brown mess.

But because of La Nina, I was able to harvest dandelion leaves. Two times, several weeks apart, I cut a bagful of them and put them in the freezer, just in case the rains from El Nino brought back the mildew. In the midst of the worst drought for a decade, there was this little blessing. 

But that wasn't the only blessing I found as I looked around my garden. There was purslane, a nutritious, edible weed that actually is pretty tasty. The asparagus, with a little bit of watering, was still going strong. The Egyptian walking onions, which had dried to a crisp earlier in the year, came back after we received a couple inches of rain.

The garden is constantly teaching me important life lessons. This year, it showed me that even when my life is going through a dry period, when I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels, when it seems I can't get anything productive done, there is still an abundance all around me. I just have to look a little harder for it.