Monday: Just Like Me

I Sure Hope the Bees Spread the Pollen from this One- It's a Fighter!

This is a picture I took at dusk yesterday of a sunflower that I inadvertently, and then adamantly, nurtured since last Fall. It is a simple Sunflower, born of a birdseed that got picked over and ultimately deposited by the many birds(and squirrels) that forage my garden for the seeds I put there for them.

This particular plant began to grow near the beginning of the very mild and rainy winter we had here in Texas. It seemed to die away and go into dormancy during the difficult season.

Just like me.

I first noticed it again when it suddenly resumed a surge in growth in early Spring. It was quite shabby and Charlie-Brown-Christmas-Tree-esque and I was offended it was marring the still bare architectural limbs of my budding fig. (I was irrationally angry and offended by a lot of things last Fall.) So I transplanted it and it didn't take kindly to the good-intentioned change. It wilted and refused to stand proud like any self-respecting Sunflower should.

Just like me.

I went through some tough times with my health in the next several weeks and stayed in bed for most of them. I felt sapped and weak and longed to relish my favorite season, Spring, that was spreading its warmth and breezes just outside my door. At my first chance, I ventured out to check on the compact container garden I keep, wondering precisely about that very Sunflower. I expected the worst. I really couldn't muster hope for any other result. But...It was alive, thirsty and hungry, but alive!

Just like me.

So, I made it a daily goal to get myself out of bed, dressed, and vertical long enough to check on that flower. This became a ritual of strength, a personal challenge to keep life in something, this stupid inanimate reject random plant. I was secretly obsessed and felt a little embarrassed by that. I was running fevers much of this time and my body was fighting and here I was mentally begging this plant NOT TO DIE.

Just like me.

The Sunflower soon became proud, stout and began to follow the sun each day. It survived a plague of silk worms that fell from the budding trees as the spring unfolded.(Some of my other plants were not so lucky.) It stretched and grew taller and began to bud. I was excited to see that this haggard plant would achieve its ultimate goal: to bloom and to spread its genetic vigor to thrive. And, in the last few days it has begun to unfurl its petals and give the world a full on view of its face. It's still quite imperfect and scarred from its long journey, but it is here and in its own way, it is beautiful.

Just Like Me.


*This is quite a rambling share, I know. But there's a parable or some kernel of truth in it-dammit! Now back to the garden...Let's hope this goes well, I have FOF disorder: Frequent Over-Fertilizing. Namaste, Friends.