In Praise Of Sunflowers!

mysunflowers
Originally uploaded by Randuwa.

I love many flowers. I am not a one note gardener. And I love them for a variety of reasons: Bee Baum for its “punk-ish hair-do” splash of color, and its tangy aromatic oils; milkweed for its gift to the Monarch butterflies (if any of them are still alive....I have not seen a single one this season); Black-Eyed Susans and Coneflowers for the same gift that they afford the Golden Finches who still manage to feast upon their tightly packed seeds and flit away in a stab of yellow at the slightest provocation (survivor's instinct, to be sure). And I love Sunflowers! Mine have just entered into the zeniths of their blooming. They are so majestic and evocative -- they really have personality.

The poet, Mary Oliver, sees this distinction, too. She writes in her poem "Sun Flowers":

"Come with me
to visit the sunflowers,
they are shy

but want to be friends"

And indeed, they are wonderful friends. To the bees, they are the mother load! No matter when I approach mine, there is always at least one bloated bumble bee obsessed with discovering every ounce of pollen that the gigantic yellow disc of the sunflower has to offer. And later, as the pollen is whiped off, and the seeds mature into zebra-stripped pods, the birds will take up where the insects have left off. Too daunting for the golden finches, the advance will be lead by the Cardinals, who have exhausted the nutrition in the dangling pods of the hosta in the garden, and the various berries beyond. And they will be followed and joined by everyone from the Sparrows to the Crows.

After delighting me with their luscious golden gleaming orbs, the sunflowers will selflessly spend all their capital for the sake of my aviary friends. .

They may indeed be shy, but "No greater love hath any thing..."