I can’t tell you how exciting it is to have blooming sunflowers in my yard.
And so early… it’s only first of July and already a few of the rogue bird planted sunflowers are coming to bloom.
And I am so excited.
I’m not quite sure why I love them so much, but I do… It think it’s the fact that they are overachievers in the seed world. Start with a little half inch seed and hardly 2 months later, you have this gigantic plant with a HUGE flower… it’s pretty nifty.
I realize there are others like this… potatoes seem to put out a crazy amount of folliage and growth from one little quarter of an old spud.
Pumpkins and gourds are wild as well… they put out a lot of stuff from a seed.
And of course acorns, they build trees… but not in two months.
I think I like them because they signify a return of my life the way I want it. The last 5 years I’ve been unable to grow sunflowers for one reason or another. The last year in my beautiful home I couldn’t grow them because I was in the midst of a divorce and just a shell of myself. I didn’t garden that year because I had no spirit within me to do it. I was barely existing, caught in a painful and emotional situation that sucked the very lifejuice from me. I was alive only to care for my children and try to make it day to day.
Next year, I lost my house to foreclosure, and didn’t garden, moving in late May up to Redford, Michigan, to a rental house. Didn’t have time to plant much there, too busy trying to get a new life started and pick up the pieces of the old. I planted a little bit, some of my transplanted hostas from the old house, and a few annuals here and there, some morning glories, but that was about it.
Next year, I tried hard to plant, even put in two teeny raised beds for some veggies, but to be honest, I hated my yard because next door there was a dog lady with like 5-8 dogs at any given time because she did rescue work.
A noble pastime, yes, we did rescue of small hamsters and pocket pets and know the work and struggle… but this was verging on abuse, if you asked me. She would have all these different dogs, big dogs, inner city dogs, locked up all day in her little house while she was at work, so they barked CONSTANTLY and then in the early morning or evening she would give them the yard to run in, but all they did was fight and bark and just didn’t get along. There was no consistant pack, just a noisy stressful dog pregatory that was constant chaos.
Gypsy was afraid to even go out in the yard…. she really suffered because I believe she could feel the anxiety and stress from the barking and all. If she got even close to the fence, the dogfarm inmates would lunge and slam the fence, snarling and growling some really mean stuff. If I was out trying to garden, I felt like I was in a prison yard with the dogs watching and attacking the fence. Very stressful. So, again, no sunflowers, no garden.
Next year, we moved to the moby…. and the healing was beginning.
We had to spend the whole summer working hard on the Moby to get her livable and comfortable for us. I started to plant, mostly landscaping, some flowers, perrenials all about, lots of bulbs for the coming spring…. but it was too late to get any sunflowers in.
However, like a little guiding beacon, and a hope for the next year… a neighbor had a lone beautiful sunflower growing by their shed, that I drove by every day. I watched it grow taller and taller and finally, it’s beautiful, glorious head of yellow and brown opened and stayed all summer long till it finally drooped over from the weight.
I knew it wouldn’t be long….
And now, finally…. after 5 long years…. I have sunflowers all around me. I have all the ones we planted as well as lots that our bird friends have planted all through the moby as well! And they have started to bloom!!!
Somehow I think it’s a sign that I’m blooming again as well.
Contentment looks good on a person.
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