Dandelion Greens

By Andrea Scarpino

 

My mother tells a story of my father picking dandelion greens from the front lawn of the Women’s Club up the street from their house when they were married. My father, who wore dress pants and a dress shirt even to mow the grass, kneeled on the front lawn, digging up weed after weed. 

 

“The women would get so angry,” my mother says, laughing. “This man kneeling in the grass of the Women’s Club.” 

 

Spring, finally, in Marquette: trees budding leaves, forsythia in bloom, blue skies and warmer temperatures. Zac and I bought starter plants for the tiny garden next to our apartment’s driveway: Lucia and slicer tomatoes, all kinds of spicy chilies. Dandelions are in bloom everywhere, hillsides of tiny suns not yet mowed away. 

 

Walking home from a run, I tell Zac the story of my father and the dandelion greens. 

 

“I guess we could pick these,” I say, pointing to dandelions in the grass along a public walkway. 

 

And then we are bending, pulling dandelions by the roots, collecting bunches of greens in our hands. At home, I trim the leaves, soak them in batch after batch of water. Zac mixes them into salad greens— “Like chewing an IPA,” he says—I blend them into my smoothies. 

 

Gay Talese tells a story of immigrant Italian Americans refusing to eat arugula because poor Italians back home used to pick it from country hillsides. When I was raving once to my cousin about buying purslane at a farmer’s market in Santa Monica, she informed me purslane grew as a weed in most southern Californian yards. 

 

What is a weed, after all, but a plant we’ve decided we don’t want? 

 

How and when we label something “food” or “weed.” How and when we label most things: disability, gender, race. How and when we choose what we value, what we throw away.