When I was a child, Mom would load us up in the car in the springtime and take us out to the countryside. We'd park near a pasture and fill paper grocery bags with fresh wild dandelion. It had to be picked when they were still in bud, if the yellow flower opened, they were too old and bitter. We'd bring the dandelion home and for a week, Mom would make dandelion salad (just olive oil, wine vinegar, salt and pepper). Heaven in a pesky little weed, would love to taste them again. Farm-grown isn't the same.

Mom is 89 now, and we were talking about it a month or so ago. A week or so later, she told me she planted a container of wild dandelions from puffballs retrieved from her neighbors yard, and they were growing like, well.... like weeds!

She enjoyed her first dandelion salad in decades yesterday. Love that woman.