Sunflowers

Whoever coined the phrase "Fragile as a flower" had limited access to sunflowers.  Having purchased the occasional bouquet of them at Trader Joe's, I have often marveled at how hefty they are.  Though guaranteed to put a smile on Sharon's face, a bunch of sunflowers could just as easily be used to cudgel someone senseless.  Beautiful?  Yes.  Fragile?  Hardly.

Given their general sturdiness, I figured growing them would be a cinch.  Umm, no.

My first set of seeds went in the ground behind the durantas, but all they amounted to was a bunch of empty shells littered along my nice little furrow of dirt.  Apparently, birds LOVE sunflower seeds.

Round two involved me scattering them around without much prep work.  More empty shells.  Did you know squirrels love sunflower seeds, too?

Sudden death round had a little more prep, but focused on on quantity versus quality.  Plant a LOT of seeds, and SOMETHING is going to grow.  Right?  Okay, so I probably should have called it something other than "sudden death", since that's what most of my would be yellow giants suffered at the hands of our backyard wildlife.  Still, the mass planting strategy worked the best.  After a couple weeks, we had some baby sunflowers growing between the lavender and the duranta.

And then we waited.  And waited.  And then, suddenly...we waited some more.  You see, growing flowers with stalks as thick as young trees takes time.  After what felt like several weeks, two of the sunny survivors started to form buds.  ETA for sunflowers: any day now.

Again, we watched and waited, eagerly anticipating the dramatic appearance of a big, showy bloom, the familiar abundance of yellow petals around a dark brown center.  Then, after a few more days we walked out and saw:

WHAT?!

I felt like someone secretly swapped our sunflower with a toothless redneck replica.  We spent a couple days making fun of it, laughing about how silly it was, imagining what it would sound like if it talked (think Sloth from the Goonies).  A few days later, the second flower bloomed.

Now THAT'S more like it!  Big.  Beautiful.  Awe inspiring.  The way a sunflower is supposed to look.  The way every sunflower one sees in pictures or in bouquet looks.

Call me crazy, but I like the first one better.

Comments

[Sharon]

me too! That sunflower was one of a kind and i will always remember him as Our First Sunflower in the garden. Tha- Daa!