A solitary brown stalk, perhaps five feet tall, still stands straight in a concrete planter. How it came to be mystifies us.
Years ago, a friend of his mother gave Bob an industrial-size concrete sink. We think it came from a dairy, but for years we’ve used it as a planter. A few years ago, we planted zinnias in it. Although this plant is an annual, we’ve had a few stragglers return from seed each year thereafter.
Because the bed looked ragged last year, I chose to change the look entirely. Remembering the prolific periwinkles that grew beside our first home in Dallas, I set out to buy a packet of periwinkle seeds. According to plant literature, they are easy to grow and require little or no attention. They withstand hot, dry conditions and continue to bloom until first frost. They grow low to the ground and are often used for borders. My kind of flower.
However, I couldn’t find packets of periwinkle seeds anywhere - not in Jesup, Brunswick, or any store in any town we passed through where I could check. When I asked about periwinkle seeds, clerks looked at me as if I were crazy. They couldn’t remember ever stocking periwinkle seeds. (I later learned that they are now called vincas.)
So I settled on pansy seeds, likewise a hardy plant often used for borders. Their velvety faces should smile from the confines of our container.
We planted our seeds, both the pansies in the planter and zinnias in a new bed as well as an old one, shortly before we left on a month long trip. However with a sprinkler system in place, we felt that they should fare well. What happened in our yard during that month of our absence, we’ll never know.
When we returned, the zinnias in both their well established bed and in the new one were growing taller day by the day. In our planter, a few zinnias stems grew along side a very thick stalk staking clinging to one corner. There were no signs of any pansies. We left the stalk just to see what it would become and the zinnias with the promise that next year, we’d be more diligent in planting this container.
Both the zinnias and the stalk grew and grew. I began to wonder if we had a beanstalk of fairy tale fame. First leaves appeared along the stems, and eventually, buds appeared both on the zinnias and the stalk. To our surprise, our mystery plant turned out to be a sunflower growing from a seed we had not knowingly planted. Perhaps a bird had left it as a gift for us. Perhaps it was a misplaced seed in the packet of pansy seeds, but if so, where were the pansies?
This past summer, we enjoyed our lone sunflower with its bright yellow petals surrounding a dark brown center so much that we plan to sprinkle only sunflower seeds in the container next year. It won’t be a field of sunflowers, but a dozen of these thick-stalked plants, which originated in North America, should bring color and comments to our yard. That is, unless we end up with a bed of forgotten pansies.
As I’ve watched this giant flower all summer long, I thought about the ancient Greeks who, in their typical fashion, explained the sunflower’s face always searching for the sun with a story. A young nymph, Clytie fell in love with Apollo, the sun god, who didn’t even recognize her existence. She would sit all day every day to watch his journey across the sky. Eventually, she turned into the flower that traces the sun’s path from East to West each day. Their science might have been skewed, but they certainly recognized how human beings become intertwined with natural events, whether we choose to or not.
The sunflower offers far more than a unique beauty in the summer. Manufacturers have processed oil from the seeds since the mid 19th century. Likewise, the seeds are used both as bird feed and as a human snack food.
It’s funny how the natural world can trick us, entice us, amaze us, inspire us. Even as it functions by natural law, creation still keeps us in awe by its sheer power (think tornados and blizzards) and beauty (sunflowers, sunsets and harvest moons).
Even with only one sunflower, in the absence of any pansies, and with the promise of more to come next year, I feel attuned with the world famous painter of sunflowers, Vincent van Gogh, who once said, “The sunflower is mine, in a way.”
2014
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