Dandelions

Driving to Antrim last Saturday I noticed that the dandelions were in their full flush. It brought back memories of those days eleven years ago when Mammy was living out her last days and everyone was at home. I drove out there every day, sometimes just to sit with her, sometimes to take whoever else was minding her out for a bit of respite. We were all ready to say goodbye to her and, at the same time, nowhere near ready to have her leave us.

Eleven years ago we were all there at her side when she died and Martha the first, and at that time the only great-grandchild was there too. 

Martha (her namesake) brought her such great joy in the last year of her life. This picture was taken only a few weeks before Matty died.

It seems we are not one of those spreading out families. Matty's children (seven of us) produced eight living grandchildren. six girls and two boys.

My six siblings and I with our mother. 

Then there were the grandchildren.

Again, just two boys. A third boy, Mark William was stillborn in 1993.

On to the next generation. Matty only got to meet Miss Martha although great-granddaughters Ava and Evie were both on the way when Mammy died.

These are Matty's great-grandchildren, the ones she never met. Including Martha, there were nine of them and just the two boys. Their great-grandmother would have adored each and every one of them.

The last baby, Séanaí, is happed up in a crocheted blanket made by his great-grandmother Martha. she would have been delighted so I shall be delighted in her stead.

   

Dandelions

At this time of the year dandelions are in their full flush of flowering. This is the time to make dandelion wine if one is so inclined. Not me, for my freezer is still full of raspberries, gooseberries and redcurrants and anyway, dandelion wine is fiddly, faffy and, in the end, overly sweet.

When we were children dandelions were ‘piss the bed’. I tried making chains from them in the school playground. Bigger kids taunted me. Touch those and you’ll wet the bed. I was embarrassed. How did they know? I wet the bed anyway, even when I didn’t touch dandelions.

There were counting games. How to tell the time using dandelion clocks. We’d blow the seeds away, one o’clock, two o’ clock and so on. It was always mid afternoon or early evening with dandelion clocks.

These days dandelions have other meanings. For those of us who consider ourselves ‘green’ they are no longer a pernicious and evil weed, but rather a valuable source of food for early pollinaters and caterpillars and no decent gardener should ever be without them.

But now, at this time of the year, this first flush of dandelions on roadside verges bring back poignant memories. In the very last days of our mother’s life, when I was making those daily journeys to her home and the weather was so fine, the dandelions carpeted the central reservation of the dual carriageway and every year since then when they bloom in profusion I am nearly undone.