The Story Behind the Name – Country Dandelions

Why “Country Dandelions”?

When my oldest daughter was 2 or 3, she would forage the yard looking for things. I was curious to what she was doing, and waited to see what would happen next. It’s fun sometimes to see where their little imaginations will take them without any adult influence. What she would bring back was a little bouquet of dandelions. This was not a one time occurance, it seemed whenever we were outside and she spotted something yellow in the grass, she would run and pick it and bring it back to me with the most delightfully pleased look on her face. So of course, I would take them, and put them in a little vase or cup of water and we would watch them eventually start to lose the yellow and sometimes turn into the little white puff.

These beautiful flowers, as she would call them, were what some would call weeds: Dandelions. And these flowers, not only being beautiful to a child, also have some pretty neat health benefits. What we as adults just want to get rid of, a child views as something beautiful that needs to be cherished and shared.

It has given me a different perspective on some things in life – to look at it from a child’s point of view. Yes, its raining, and there is mud everywhere…but oh wow, what fun it is to splash in it and make a complete mess of everything! While it may take some extra time to clean the tiny mud footprints of the floor (or wall sometimes, how feet get on walls…), seeing the joy that a child gets at some of the simplest things in life make it all worthwhile. Normally a bouquet of yellow “weeds” would not be my choice of decor for my home, but seeing the delight that she received that her special gift to me was accepted and cherished – those are the priceless moments of life.

We are not saying that our artwork is like a weed, and can only be viewed as beautiful by a child, but rather that life itself is beautiful. There is beauty all around us, just sometimes we need to become like children to see it from a different perspective.

When we lived in San Diego, our perspective was very much focused on working to pay for the things we needed to live there. Our work consumed us, between the hours spent commuting, hours behind a desk, overtime hours – it started to take a toll that we were working to pay for a house that we didn’t even spend all that much time in.

Taking on a different perspective, we looked outside of the city life we had, and looked more to the country. When that happened, a different idea of what we wanted in life started to take hold. This shift in perspective was surely not all from us, for often when you are stuck in one point of view it can be nearly impossible to see anything else.

Thinking back to to our previous mindset, we were stuck working 40 hours a week and commuting 10-15 hours a week. It never crossed our minds that this lifestyle could be changed for something better. This is where our faith comes in though – for we believe, and know that our perspective change was not from us, but from God. We know He had a better plan for us and helped get us to where we are now. While tough times still come, we have time to stop and smell the country dandelions. We went from the city to the country and have a whole new perspective on life that has allowed us more time to spend together and enjoy the beauty this life has to offer.