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Victory in the Desert

I adore sunflowers. To me they embody sunshine, beauty, and happiness. I love that they grow so tall while turning their faces toward the sun. The fact that they provide food for birds is an extra bonus to their beauty.

My husband and I bought our first home with a nice back yard about a decade ago. I fell in love with the property because of its many gardens, grape arbor, and lilac and rose bushes, as well as plants and flowers I could not even name. I wanted to become an avid gardener like my father. This new home was going to be my garden paradise. I would put my own green thumb-print onto the already landscaped back yard, by adding my botanical favorites.

We closed on the house in May, a perfect time in Connecticut to get my gardens in order. I surveyed what was already there, and drew up a little map of what I wanted to add. I'd have morning glories climbing up a trellis by the bird bath, and lily of the valley in the shady areas. I decided to transform one of the side gardens into a butterfly haven, so there would be butterfly bushes, cone flowers and other attracting blooms. First, I had to clean up the gardens and prepare them for planting though. This meant weeding which was going to be tricky. A novice gardener, I wasn't sure which emerging plants were weeds, and which ones were desirable plants.

I noticed one plant that was growing by leaps and bounds. It seemed it grew about three inches a day. I left it, because I believed it was going to be something special. However, it kept growing and growing, and nothing happened. There was no flower, even after it achieved a height of one foot! Beginning to worry that it was a mammoth weed putting down roots 20 feet deep, with the inevitable flowering part popping open to disperse seeds all over my gardens, I yanked it out. It came out pretty easily too. I tossed it over the fence into the empty lot we owned next door.

That night, my husband came home from work, and I brought him out to survey the beautiful job I did cleaning up the beds. He looked around smiling then asked;

"Where's the sunflower I planted?"

"What sunflower?"

"The large stalk that was right there?" He pointed exactly to the place I pulled out the large weed.

"Oh no, I love sunflowers, I didn't know that's what it was!"

I offered to go find it in the lot and replant it. My husband told me it was too late. I felt awful about

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