Dandy Lines

Oooooh!  That Dandy Line is PRETTY!

Hiya, Friends!  Yesterday was a hot one outside, so I put on my SPF and went exploring, and do you know what I found?

I found me some Dandy Lines.  You know, those pretty yellow flowers outside?  They're yellow, and then they turn all fluffy and white, and you can blow on 'em, and their little fairy-pods go flying into the air? 

Dandy Lines!

It got me thinking about Dandy Lines, and how pretty they are, so when I came back inside, I looked 'em up on the World Wide Web.  You wouldn't believe what I found out about these pretty yellow flowers, Friends!

Why, some people think they're NOXIOUS WEEDS!  Noxious?!  Can't they see how pretty and yellow they are!  Don't they know what all you can DO with Dandy Lines?!

Dandy Lines make me so happy!

You can EAT Dandy Lines!  The whole thing from flower to root to leaves are EDIBLE!  How about that?!  You can roast up the roots, you can make salad out of the leaves, and also use the flowers in salad!  I suppose that stem could also go in the salad, since it doesn't seem like it'd stand up to roasting very well.

Dandy Lines are an ingredient in Root Beer!  How about that?!

Some people make Dandy Line Wine with the flowers.  I'm too little to know about wine, but I'm plenty familiar with the kind of wine that has the "H" in it, especially when I don't wanna nap.  See what I did there?  Those two words sound alike, wine and whine.  Completely different things, though.  They're totally different.  That's why it's funny!

Dandy Lines are beautiful!

Back to Dandy Lines, though.  Didja know that Dandy Lines can be beneficial to your garden, because the taproots bring nutrients to the soil?  And also, some birds eat Dandy Line seeds, and the Dandy Lines can attract insects to pollinate the plants in the garden! 

Besides that, you can take the flower off the stem, bend it around and plug in the narrow end where the flower was to the wider end, and make a circle.  If you make a buncha circles out of a buncha stems, you can make a chain, and then if you wanna pretend you're making scrambled eggs while you're playing outside, you can take a pie-plate, and put in the yellow flowers, and pretend you're cooking them.

I know some people out there are allergic to Dandy Lines, and that makes me feel kind of bad.  I think of Dandy Lines as Super-Extra Hardy Free Perennial Flowers!  And I just love 'em!