Dandelion Wishes

Cultivating spinach is sort of like picking a flower, only not just one flower but thousands, and not flowers but weeds. Since herbicides aren’t used on organic farms, all weeds need to be pulled out by hand or hoe. This week I cultivated two 350 foot-long spinach beds, and halfway through I picked a dandelion so I could blow its seeds into the wind and make a wish. I stopped believing in dandelion wishes when I stopped believing in the tooth fairy, but I like to think that one day one lucky dandelion will be the one to work. I was tired and I wanted to wish that all of the weeds in the world would disappear forever, but I quickly changed my mind. I remembered something I once heard, that weeds are only weeds until we find a use for them, and I thought of a world in which little girls never knew the glow of buttercups under their chins. But mostly, I changed my mind so I could keep wishing. If this one came true, there would be no more dandelions left to wish on again.