My Step Children (oil on panel 16 x 20")
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. -Thoreau
My neighbors don't like dandelions. They consider them to be weeds. They poison them with herbicides, and pull them up without a second thought. Dandelions are almost universally friendless and unwelcome.
But dandelions have long been my favorite flower. I admire their persistence and sunny disposition despite efforts to contain them. My yard is a kind of underground railroad for dandelions. I encourage them. When their blossoms dot my lawn I mow around them. Later I pick their fluffy seedheads and let the wind set them free, traveling on to still greener pastures.
The dandelion in the painting caught my attention because it grows in a crack between the stone wall and bricks of the steps outside my house. There is no soil. It is the most unlikely place for a plant to grow, never mind to flower and return year after year. It epitomizes nature's persistence and determination to flourish in an unhospitable environment.
The little blue flowers are Gill-over-the-Ground, a wild mint that also grows randomly all over my yard - another survivor.