About a sunflower

The unexpected teacher.

Dear Kula Diaries,

Today I’m sharing a short essay that comes from a prompt that I received in the Kula Diaries Vault a few months ago. If you have a little bit of time in your day today, I suggest that you borrow the prompt and do the exercise on your own as well — I found it to be really beautiful and special, and it gave me an entirely new appreciation for a special flower in my garden.

I hope you enjoy reading it — and feel free to share your own flower observations in the comments, I’d love to read them!

This was the prompt…

Take a walk, look out your window, or use the Internet to find a blooming flower or tree. Study it closely for 10 minutes, paying attention and noting down what you see. Set a timer for 10 minutes and write a scene, flash essay, poem, or story that includes your observations.

When it’s dark outside, I can’t see the sunflower that I know is growing in the small garden next to my garage — but I feel better knowing it is there. A friend gave me this sunflower in a small plastic container at our Musical Mountaineers concert a few months ago. I questioned my ability to keep it alive — but they assured me that anybody could grow a sunflower.

Anybody but me, I thought to myself. When I was a kid, there was a lawn in my neighborhood that always had a little sign posted out front — ‘Green Thumb Award’, it said. The lawn was perfectly manicured and the grass was emerald green and soft and lush.. I used to joke that they’d someday give me, ‘Whatever was the opposite of the Green Thumb Award’.

I brought the sunflower home and placed it in the sun on my porch for much longer than I should have, because I forgot about it. I watered it when I remembered that it was there — just like the plants that sit on a small glass shelf in my living room. My mom told me to water them by placing a few ice cubes in their bowls when I remember to do it. Even you can take care of these plants, Anastasia, she had told me. But I didn’t. The problem is that I don’t remember to do it. One of the plants is completely dead and shriveled, but I still put ice cubes in its bowl every few months — a Hail Mary that maybe, just maybe, there’s a shred of life in there that might come back someday and prove me wrong.

The infant sunflower.

Eventually, I transplant the sunflower into the tiny raised garden bed on the side of our garage. At the time that I do this, the raised beds are so full of weeds that I have to use a shovel to dig some of them out. But, I do it. I plant the sunflower, and I water it. It looks like it is drooping over with fatigue, and I’m not sure if it is going to survive. I water it — and hope for the best. This time, I’m going to remember to take care of this plant, I tell myself encouragingly.

As the days pass, the sunflower starts to get noticeably taller. This, I realize, is a very good sign. It’s growing — against the odds — and I find myself remembering to water it daily. Eventually, the stem is starting to fall over from its own weight, so I take a piece of twine and use it to give the sunflower some support against a piece of bamboo. The stem gradually straightens as the sunflower climbs skyward.

The sunflower is growing — quickly!

On a good day, I’m 5’4 — at least with shoes on. But, really, if I’m being honest — I’m 5’3. Somebody once told me that they were surprised I was so short. “You look much taller on the internet,” they said. One day the sunflower is under my nose, and two days later, it is taller than me. It is growing so quickly that I swear I could see it grow if I sat here and stared at it for long enough. It has three buds that look like they will become flowers, and eventually the bud on the top starts to open.

Every day before I go to work and when I get home, I climb up onto the edge of the raised flower bed so that I can look at the sunflower. I stand eye-to-eye with this flower, and I look at it slowly and carefully. I watch it closely — I see the bug crawling on its leaf and I notice that the colors of the flower are dark and rich and golden. Each day, there is something new about this flower — and it continues to grow and grow, rising higher each day. There is so much life in the unfathomable complexity of this one single flower — the fuzz on its stem… the labyrinth of veins on its wide leaves… the impossibly perfect spiral pattern of the seeds nestled in the middle of its golden petals. As I look beyond the plant… I see the water and the sun and the clouds and the sky… and me, with my little hose nozzle… and my friend who gave it to me… an endless tumbling of miracles that had to occur in order for this flower to exist.

It’s outgrown me!

I have not forgotten to water this flower, because I feel a strange sense of dedication to it. I feel humbled to bear witness to the becoming of this precious, golden plant. One day, as I am watering the flower, I realize that the flower must have an uninhibited sense of trust in the universe around it. There is no guarantee that I will continue to water it — and yet, instead of conserving its strength or ‘waiting to see what happens’ — it just grows. It grows with the reckless abandon of a flower that wants to live and bloom to the fullest expression of who it is. It does not hold back. It is not staying small, just in case. It is not preparing for any worst case scenarios, because it somehow knows in the way that sunflowers know things that the worst case scenario is the one in which it does not grow into the most beautiful version of who it can be.

All along, I thought it was me who was taking care of the flower — and now, I realize that I was very wrong. I walk back into the house and pull some ice cubes out of the freezer. I have more plants to water.

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Friends — thank you so much for being here! This little essay is different than what I normally write, but I hope that it inspires you to share a story about a flower. It has brought so much joy into my life to watch this sunflower bloom — and I hope it reminds you that we each have that same capacity to bloom, without limits, into the most beautiful expression of who we are.

I am sending you all so much love this week, wherever and however you are.