Every year for the past several I’ve been lucky to have volunteer sunflowers scattered throughout the back yard. If they choose to come up in a place that’s not designated for something else, I typically just let them grow as they can. The pollinators love it and the birds enjoy them throughout the fall and winter.
This summer, in one of the raised beds where I put tomatoes, a sunflower started to grow. I didn’t think much of it. One had grown pretty near that same spot last summer, so I decided to see what might come of it. As it started growing it got really big and tall, all green leaves and heavy stem, no blossoms. It just kept climbing like Jack’s beanstalk. It was easily over ten feet tall before it had one tiny blossom at the top. I thought, well, if that’s all I get from a volunteer, I’ll take it–this gangly, tall, beast of a plant with one teeny tiny flower at the top. Then something extraordinary happened. It exploded in gold and brown blossoms all over. It developed branches. I kid you not this thing looked like a tree. At it’s zenith, it was probably 12 to 14 feet in height.
Several weeks ago, I had to make the difficult choice of putting my elderly cat, Usul, to sleep. She was 16 1/2 and in a tremendous amount of pain. The evening before, I dug her grave and when the time came, Mary helped me lay her to rest in it and we gathered those sunflower blossoms and covered her with them. I don’t know why things meet in time like they do, but I felt like my sweet kitty deserved the final honor of being covered with a blanket of sunflower blossoms before being buried.
Now that fall is here and the remaining blossoms have all faded and the seeds are getting ready to scatter for next year, I’m hopeful that another volunteer or many volunteers will choose to grace me and teach me of patience and beauty and honor again. And I have enough that I might share with my loved ones so they can get to enjoy a similar experience.
I encourage you, when something beautiful shows up in your life, let it grow. See what happens. Who knows what can be learned.
