Lessons from a sunflower
When we bought our house, Husband and I had big plans for a grand vegetable garden in our backyard. We took steps to build large raise bed planters. We dug up the grass in them so we didn't have to worry about it growing through our tomato plants. Then...we stopped. Well, we didn't really stop, life happened. Eventually we dismantled the raised flower beds and repurposed the wood as a bench around the our fire pit, or maybe as a privacy fence blocking the neighbor's driveway...heck, maybe it was both. Either way, we dismantled and repurposed. At that point, I kind of figured we were done with the garden idea. We were never going to be the people picking vegetables from our own garden and making dinner with them. Fast forward several years, Husband changes jobs to be home more and decides to plan out an elaborate, beautiful garden of raised beds. He researches everything from what to plant when, to what to plant together, to how to start stuff from seed, to what raised beds to buy. He does it all. Through out the summer our family group chat received regular "Farm Reports" with pictures of everything growing and updates on what was happening. My brothers and sisters in law were getting all the latest information about our garden. I will fully admit that my biggest contribution was to enjoy the fruits of Husband's labor. While I love a good freshly picked cucumber, I didn't really want to work for them.
As we approached this summer, and prepared to move Female Offspring to college while Male Offspring was becoming more and more independent thanks to a driver's license, I realized that I wanted to spend more time with Husband. I wanted to do something with him that we could both enjoy. So I decided to try to get more into "the farm", but I didn't want to mess up the vegetables. Enter sunflowers. We have a great backyard with a gorgeous sun deck (built by my family for Mother's Day during Covid) and I felt like a field of sunflowers surrounding it would be amazing. Husband just so happened to have bought a variety of sunflower seeds when he purchased seed and he wasn't opposed to the idea of a field full of sunflowers. One afternoon, I joined Husband at the dining room table to plant the sunflower seeds in starter pods. We talked and laughed and enjoyed each other's company while we both planted seeds (him planting vegetables, me planting sunflowers). Over the next couple of weeks, we watered our seeds and watched as they started to sprout. When it was time, we moved them to back table and repotted them in larger containers. Eventually, one Saturday, Husband told me it was time to get the seedlings in the ground or they wouldn't make it. Well, what you need to know is that I had put a lot of seeds in each of the starter pods. This meant I had A LOT of sunflowers to plant, but I was for it! (Remember the goal was to have a field of sunflowers by my deck.) I rotatilled (is that a word) the ground and planted rows and rows of sunflowers. There were still more plants. It seemed like there were hundreds of plants...once the back area was as full as I could make it, I decided to plant some of the sunflowers in the old wheelbarrow in the front. Not thinking much of the idea, carried my remaining plants to the front and planted them.
Everything grew beautifully. I had my little field of sunflowers and I loved it. For the record, the squirrels really loved it. They ate most of the ones in the back, but I still enjoyed the ones I got to see bloom.
The plants in the front area TOOK OFF! In that wheelbarrow I grew one of the most perfect sunflowers I have ever seen. That's the one that really taught me a lesson. It seems the squirrels were not content with the back field, they wanted that perfect one too. So one day, I walk out my front door and my perfect bloom has been gnawed right off the stem, dragged across my front yard and devoured by squirrels. How do I know that's what happened you ask? Because remnants of the bloom were all over my front yard with the final bits of carnage at the base of the front tree. I was sad, a little angry and slightly impressed at that ability of the squirrels to get a hold of this bloom. I started to try to figure out what to do to prevent the squirrels from getting any more of "MY" sunflowers. I started trimming them off once they bloomed and bringing them in the house to enjoy, which was actually quite lovely. I loved seeing the huge blooms on my counter every morning as a made my breakfast.
One day, I was trimming blooms to bring in the house, I noticed something. Directly below the place were the squirrels had gnawed off the original perfect bloom, there was a bud. A tiny little glimmer of hope and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. One of the most important lessons any of us can learn was coming to me from my own front yard.
This sunflower had grown delightfully in the sunshine of our front yard. It had done everything right and created an amazing bloom. Then it was attacked and "destroyed" by a squirrel (who was truly just doing what squirrels do). The destruction was very clear and quite hurtful. Did the sunflower give up? Did it let the set back keep it from moving forward and continuing to share it's blooms? NO, no it did not. This sunflower taught me, even if something chews you in half, reset your bud and keep sharing your beauty.
Life comes at us all like a ton of bricks at times. We work hard and do our best and the world, maybe it's the haters, come along to chew right through your stem. They might even stomp on your bloom for good measure, but that doesn't mean you are ruined. Orthodoxy teaches that suffering helps us grow. Not in a "you must suffer" angry kind of way, but in the way that suffering can sort of burn off the junk that the world fills us with at times. The world wants us to hide our beauty and our love behind the anger and frustration. Suffering can let us see how we can regroup, reset and bloom again.
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