Sunflowers

Each year my husband and son plant sunflowers from seed. They put the seeds in little seed pods in our green house, and I water them faithfully, and when they are big and strong enough, Michael and Nicholas transplant them in our vegetable and flower garden next to the greenhouse. It is one of my most favorite flowers of  summer, the sunflower to me symbolizes the height of summer's glory and generosity. As they grow taller and stronger, and surpass my height and then my husband's and then my son's, who is almost five foot six, I fall in love with these gorgeous flowers time and again. Their hunger for the sun's light and warmth, their gracious stalks, their fiery petals and abundant hearts that allow the bees to feast themselves in to a bacchanalian stupor, and their scent. A friend of mine, years ago now, said about sunflowers: " I like the way they smell." Ever since then I go and smell my sunflowers, and they smell like wild honey, a very earthy, sensual scent that always makes me miss my friend. When my husband and I were camping through Europe on our honeymoon in 1987, we passed by a huge field of sunflowers in southern France. It was visually an ocean of tall flowers, swaying in the gentle southern breeze. Beautiful, overwhelmingly so. As the summer wanes, and the other flowers fade, the sunflowers are still going strong, and the bees  swarm them, eager for their sweet blossoms. Then fall comes, and cooler weather, and the majestic sunflowers start to droop their magnificent heads, their petals dry, their leaves turn yellow, the bees too, fade.  The birds come, small and large, and start devouring the brave sunflowers seeds, tearing at what remains of their glory and beauty. By the time the birds are done with them, the sunflowers hearts gape white, and empty, and their stalks start slumping to the earth from which they grew. Winter comes, and we cut heir skeletons down, and now they give a brief warm fire, before all that is left of them is the memory of their glorious height and color intoxicating summer's warmth and joy. And I start longing, as snow covers the backyard, for spring and the planting of the seeds in the greenhouse, and I long to see the tender sunflower seedlings transplanted by my patient husband and son, so I can start watering them, and see them grow, tall, beautiful, strong again, to grace the summer's rich gift of warmth and renewal.