Sunflowers

Part One, Mexican Sunflower

a view of the Mexican Sunflower from the second floor front porch

While people are counting tomatoes and cucumbers, I am relishing the counting of Monarchs!!  With thanks to the Mexican Sunflower, aka Tithonia Torch, the garden has become an extraordinarily welcoming place for migrating Monarchs, and aren't we so lucky?!

One of my favorite activities these days has been going out to the garden with Rosemary and just standing near the Mexican Sunflower.  It is planted near the front of the garden in the center circle of a a fermata-shaped (fermata + one extra outside crescent) bed- or perhaps you could say it is planted in the pupil of "the cyclops eye" or it is the focus of "the grand pause."  There are many poetic ways to describe it, but seeing the 5' tall bush exploding with bright red-orange daisy-like flowers is all the poetry one needs.  And not only are the flowers breath-taking, they almost always have at least two monarchs perched on them, drinking.  Watching as the monarchs sit and sip, slowly opening and closing their wings of radiant color is awesome; Rosemary and I truly watch in full awe.  The special treat came a few days ago, when upon standing by the Mexican Sunflower, watching the monarchs, we were greeted with a very friendly hummingbird!  That little vibrating bird with invisible wings, flew about a foot in front of our face, right up to the rouge-vif-d'entampes-colored flower, I swear looked us right in the eyes and smiled, drank the sweet nectar from the flower, and flew off across the street.  So amazing.  And so exciting!  

To meet monarchs and now hummingbirds (and the masses of bumble bees and giant grasshoppers among others) on this little plot of land gives me such great joy.  Forget the vegetables, this complex, vibrant and colorful ecosystem is is the fruit of the harvest for me!  One things for sure, I know which seeds I'll be sure to save this year so I can plant a big patch of them next year!

A little shout-out to Buckeye with Mexican Sunflowers

Part Two, Mammoth Sunflowers & "Pollinators"

Flowers have a funny way of affecting things around them much more than we can understand I feel.  It's like the way that the smile of one person passing by can spread and spread and spread and spread- and who knows how many more people will have felt that good warm feeling.  I of course grow flowers for much of this same reason- to bring myself smiles.  I also like to grow flowers because they bring beneficial pollinators, too.  I see this with the bumble bees and the monarchs and yellow jackets and the flies and the hummingbirds!  But I didn't quite anticipate the "beneficial pollinators" that would arrive in the form of neighbors!

The first encounter with a "beneficial pollinator" came just the other evening when I was sitting out on the bench in the garden watching as the sunset and night closed in.  Daniel was playing football with the kids on the street, which Rosemary and I were enjoying watching.  A colony of bats that just recently moved into the old chimney of the church across the street from the garden had just emerged with the dusk hour, and were flapping all around, squeaking with an orange background.  I was fully engaged, when Derek, a little boy who lives a couple houses over, came over to me and Rosemary to say hi.  He often will greet me and Rosemary and Nuva our dog, and ask how the chickens are.  Often, he asks to see the chickens.  At first, I felt like saying no, go find something else to do.  But then when I listened to him again, I thought to myself- what else are you doing?  So we made our way to the back of the house, where we encountered the mammoth sunflowers that are taller than me and almost two times the size of little Derek.  

Our trip to visit the chickens quickly became an awe-aspiring worship of the sunflowers who gracefully bowed their heads to look down upon us.  He asked if they drank the sun.  Yes, I said.  We marveled at their large, developing seeds.  Their bright colored petals and huge leaves.  Derek said he wanted to do a sunflower dance, and so we did.

The second meeting with "beneficial pollinators" came while Rosemary & I were out in the garden just looking around.  Vic, a neighbor who lives a few houses down, called out to me, Rosemary & Nuva as we walked out front door- saying "heeey!"  Usually Vic just greets us, maybe we go over and say hello and spend some time chatting.  But a few days ago (interestingly, the day or so after the hole in the fence was patched up) was the first time that Vic and his partner, Margaret- (who I had never met before, but lives on this street with her mother & is the grandmother to several people on this street) came over to get an informal tour of the garden.  We talked about pumpkins and watermelons, collards, beans, and roosters.  But it was what Margaret had to say about the sunflowers that surprised and delighted me the most.  Margaret told me that she could see the sunflowers from her bathroom window and has been watching them grow.  I had realized that the one sunflower was so tall that it grew above the garage, and was so full of flowers that, of course, it must be able to be seen beyond this little backyard- but hearing Margaret say that she had watched them grow and can see them from her bathroom was such an honor.  It makes me so happy, because I know how happy it makes me to see flowers out my window- and I feel satisfied to think I have provided flowers for my neighbors in their homes, too.  It was a gift from Margaret to share that with me.

The third "pollinator" experience came after Hurricane Issac rolled through Buckeye.  Buckets of rain that lasted for hours was a great relief and thirst-quenching for previously dry earth.  However, the buckets of water also took some plants down.  That included some of the tallest sunflowers.  So, as is the circle of life and death, I cut down the slumped sunflowers and made big bright bouquets for the kitchen and to give to the neighbors.  I gave Liz a bunch, who as a serious flower gardener herself she fully appreciates the grand, the lush and the colorful (she gave me a huge handful of big purple irises in the Spring).  Then there was Joyce, who I'm not sure she knew what to do with this glass-bottle-vase of big bright sunflowers.  She thought they were pretty, but thought maybe I was giving her some plants to grow.  I explained to her that they were cut flowers, and would maybe last a week or so.  She liked them, and it felt like it was a new tradition.  I stayed and chatted with her, her son, and her daughter, and she played with Rosemary.  It was a moment to enjoy, yet again, more fruit of the harvest.

Next year, I plan to grow sunflowers all along the front of the house, in front of the living-wall-bushes that we inherited with the house.  This year, there is just one shorter variety growing to foreshadow what's to come.  Perhaps, I can predict sunflowers, but who can say what "beneficial pollinators" will turn up then....