I've been picking dandelions for tea, and possibly dandelion wine one day. (They're packaged in the freezer for now).

So everywhere I go, for a few weeks, I'm noticing the fields rich with particularly golden dandelion-heads.

I tell Grandma about it, and she starts noticing them too. She says, "For my part, a dandelion's about the prettiest flower there is. The only reason they're called a weed is that they're so prolific."

We took a drive to the Fabric Depot the other week, the first time Grandma'd been up to doing that frivolous outing in years. We got off to a rollicking start, trying to eat an orange together in the car, with it slithering away but always landing harmlessly on something washable and reasonably clean.

We noticed dandelions the whole way there.

When we got close to the parking lot, which is along a very parking-lot filled strip of east 122nd Avenue, there was a used-car lot with yellow balloons tied to each and every car.

"Oh, look," Grandma said, "There's a whole big field of them, whadyacallum, the flowers you've been collecting."

We only went for carpet-thread, but we found a package of Aplets and Cotlets on the way out, too.