DANDY DANDELIONS
Gardeners say: when the dandelions are out, put out your Mason Bee cocoons. Well, I let my dandelions flourish for weeks in my backyard—to keep my bees happy. In years past, I’ve dug up the dandelions before they could flower, but I stopped that when I learned about their role in the life cycle of Mason bees.
I have to admit, seeing all the bright yellow flowers, added so much wonder to an otherwise painfully drab month. But there was a limit to how much I would put up with, and that was reached when the beautiful flowers were ‘going down for the count’, their stems turning deep red, trying to hide among the leaves, preparing to rise again and display their attractive seed heads for a passing breeze. If the bees didn’t need them anymore, then I didn’t need them either. It was time to ‘nip them in the bud’, so to speak, or next year I wouldn’t be able to see the grass for all the dandelions that would take over my yard.
So, in the last month, I’ve made my daily rounds, usually in the morning, to find and pick the immature dandelion seed heads. You see, after the flowers close up for the last time, they drop down within reach of the slugs. Their heads are heavy and the ‘plant metamorphosis’—called ‘going to seed’—happens quite quickly. So the slugs have a field day eating the tiny ripe yellow petals inside their green receptacles. Carpe diem. The slugs seize the day. It’s as if they know that the flowers are not going to open again.
The whole procedure of searching among all the green leaves for the ‘fallen’ dandelions, made me think of the very first editing course I took in February, 2021. There’s no prescribed order for taking the 12 required courses for the SFU Editing Certificate program, so I took the first one I saw: Proofreading.
You might say, what’s the connection? Well, there are many aspects of proofreading: it’s the last step, after a document, a book or a magazine has been edited and is ready to be published. It’s the last chance to check for three main types of errors: missing parts, which could be symbols, citations under an image or links; content errors, such as accurate names, dates or times; and consistent formatting of the text and the visual design. A proofreader is looking at it in the same way kids look for Waldo in those great big busy books, before they memorize his location on each page. Or the way I look for the green dandelion receptacles, in a field of green, that can’t be memorized. I’m not interested in the yellow flowers or other plants. I need to focus on finding the receptacles, hiding in the grass, because if I miss one, I’ll pay for that mistake when the seeds are flying around in all directions, impossible to grab.
Some skills, learned as a child or in a different environment, are transferred to other environments and that’s a resource that make us smarter.
Fiona