"Tell Times"

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. We used to call dandelions “Tell Times” -- we’d get a flower gone to seed and blow and blow – how many individual seed heads were left we counted for the hour. Some people count how many quick short puffs it takes to get all the seeds to fly away. We used to spend days at a family place out in the deep sands below Columbia, there was what passed for a lawn but with those almost sterile soils and no irrigation, dandelions had a field day. There was no television reception out there, and we wandered the swamp below the spillway (where bootleggers stills were occasionally blown up) and hunted for blackberries which Momma made into pie. The refrigerator didn’t have a freezer, so no ice cream to top that dessert.