Morning Thanks--Sunflower

It was late in the season, almost September, and Lowe's was getting rid of it leftover greenery--fifty, maybe 75 percent off everything. I was--and still am--on the look out to add color to our acre of field grass, so I took a couple of gnarled sunflower plants, even though the tag said they were annuals. At that price, I thought, I can still get some sunlight out of 'em for a month or so.

They didn't do much last year, stayed down close to the earth, bore me a couple of big open faces, probably paid for themselves in shy showyness. So much for that, I thought. At least they didn't break the bank.

I'm coming late to tending the backyard. In what seems a previous existence altogether, I put in a garden when we lived in a house with an open space. Our last place, a sweet old "arts and craft" house, was entirely shade, but that earlier place had a backyard open to the sky. 

But that was it. At 70 years old, I'm a rookie. Honestly I had no idea that anything would come back from those end-of-the-year losers no one took off the tables in the summer. They were annuals--the tag said they were annuals. 

But they were sunflowers, and while their blessed roots miraculously regenerate, those old fells left seeds that got themselves christened by life itself and, viola! today I've now there's a monster out back that, soon enough, will memorialize Wilt and Stilt. Look at him. He's huge, and the kid is still growing--a dozen flowers right now and Lord knows how many other buds awaiting the call.

Just last year, South Dakota produced a billion pounds of seeds to lead the nation in sunflowers. North Dakota was second, Kansas and Colorado right behind. South Dakota farmers weathered some pretty extreme drought last year, but sunflowers, like this behemoth, barely work up a sweat.

There can be some problem with disease, I'm told, but it's not unmanageable. The toughest lesson one Kansas farmer learned when growing 160 acres for the first time was the problem with dry down--blasted plants just don't want to quit. 

Doubt it? Check out that monster up top once more time. I didn't even know he existed in April. He came out of nowhere. I bought him weary and heavy-laden at a huge discount; a year later he casts a long shadow over everything. I get why some Dakotans like 'em. They refuse not to grow. Life itself is a miracle, don't you think? What a gift.

There's this too, of course. I mow my lawn and two days later the crab grass rises skyscraper-like, as if energized, as if, in its own opinion, it's angry about having spent far too much time under cover. Boom. You can almost watch it grow. Ugly stuff. Today I got to pull it out. Even if I do, it'll just come back. Life. It just won't quit.

But dawn is coming later now every morning. To say there's a chill in the air right now is overstating, but much of summer's scorching heat is safely behind us. Lots of things out back have flowered, leaving behind spindly carcasses that weeks ago, in flower, turned the backyard into an impressionist canvas. Today, almost lifeless, they remind anyone who spots their frailty of the old adage--sic transit gloria mundi.

I don't know a whole lot of Latin, but that phrase has meaning even if I don't know the words. 

A guy came to visit a couple days ago. He took his fancy scooter, he said, because his wife was gone, which enabled him to sneak it out of the garage--five miles or so from his place to ours. I'd never really seen him walk before. It wasn't pretty. When he'd stand, he'd have to lean against a railing or the back of a couch simply to hold himself. He had Parkinson's, he told me. I didn't know that, but that he had something debilitating was painfully obvious. 

"I'm eighty years old," he said, a kind of proud grimace across his face.

"I'm seventy," I told him--and reminded myself gamely. 

Even when you stand beside a sunflower, there are moments in the life of a retired old buck, that you repeat that old Latin phrase like a mantra. Even with all that strength, all that power, all that flowery glory, you can't help but remember there'll be a winter soon. Nothing will grow.

That's sure. 

No matter. This morning, I'm still thankful for the miracle of that towering sunflower. Bought it at a discount, too--or did I tell you that?