Saturday, July 16, 2005
Life Without Sunflowers
In early June when I visited my aunt who lives in a small mountaintop village, she gave me a tour of her garden. Fig trees, lemon trees, willows and a variety of other trees fenced off her yard. We walked by plots of lettuce, carrots, and cabbage next to her driveway. Near the back entrance of the house grew herbs and strawberry bushes, but what caught my eyes were the sunflowers. Two grew near the sidewalk, and I remember my eyes following their thin long stems from the ground up to a height of five or six feet. Their big leaves blew softly with the breeze, but their strong stems stood unshaken. Then at their peak they crowned themselves with a big round yellow flower.
When I got back home I didn't waste much time before buying sunflower seeds. I wanted to grow tall sunflowers of my own before the first frost. I planted three along the walkway up to our house so that we could gasp at them everytime we entered the house in a month or two.
From the day I planted them I would go outside to check on them every day. My visits grew a little more frequent about four days later when they sprouted. I literally watched those plants grow. I counted their leaves almost daily and watered them meticulously. But my enthusiasm couldn't ensure their survival.
About two weeks later I went out one morning to find one sunflower completely gone. At close inspection I noticed that it had been devoured down to its base. A mere few millimeters of the chopped off stem peaked out of the ground.
With two other baby sunflower plants to tend to I wasn't too devastated. I focused my energy on the other two. They grew even taller in the next few weeks, until suddenly the taller of the two plants met a similar fate as the other dead sunflower. Actually, a little more of the stem remained intact and the herbivore even left one leaf. Unfortunately, the damage was too great and days later that plant shriveled and died, too.
With only sunflower left, I decided to take more care. I collected dozens of twigs and piled them up around the last sunflower. They protected it well for a few weeks, long enough I thought I found the trick. Unfortunately when I went outside today I found the last sunflower completely shriveled up. I thought maybe these hot 90+ summer temperatures were just a little too much. I rushed to the water hose and started watering in a mad frenzy. A few minutes into the watering I noticed that the upper part of the plant had been chopped off completely from the base of the stem. The poor dry leaves weren't just lacking water, they'd been completely cut off life support.
We have voracious mice living our bushes and they've been eating our marigolds and terrorizing just about any other living plant in our front yard. Pest control's going to be paying us a visit soon. In the meantime, I'm 3/3 with these sunflowers :-\ ... Better luck next time?
When I got back home I didn't waste much time before buying sunflower seeds. I wanted to grow tall sunflowers of my own before the first frost. I planted three along the walkway up to our house so that we could gasp at them everytime we entered the house in a month or two.
From the day I planted them I would go outside to check on them every day. My visits grew a little more frequent about four days later when they sprouted. I literally watched those plants grow. I counted their leaves almost daily and watered them meticulously. But my enthusiasm couldn't ensure their survival.
About two weeks later I went out one morning to find one sunflower completely gone. At close inspection I noticed that it had been devoured down to its base. A mere few millimeters of the chopped off stem peaked out of the ground.
With two other baby sunflower plants to tend to I wasn't too devastated. I focused my energy on the other two. They grew even taller in the next few weeks, until suddenly the taller of the two plants met a similar fate as the other dead sunflower. Actually, a little more of the stem remained intact and the herbivore even left one leaf. Unfortunately, the damage was too great and days later that plant shriveled and died, too.
With only sunflower left, I decided to take more care. I collected dozens of twigs and piled them up around the last sunflower. They protected it well for a few weeks, long enough I thought I found the trick. Unfortunately when I went outside today I found the last sunflower completely shriveled up. I thought maybe these hot 90+ summer temperatures were just a little too much. I rushed to the water hose and started watering in a mad frenzy. A few minutes into the watering I noticed that the upper part of the plant had been chopped off completely from the base of the stem. The poor dry leaves weren't just lacking water, they'd been completely cut off life support.
We have voracious mice living our bushes and they've been eating our marigolds and terrorizing just about any other living plant in our front yard. Pest control's going to be paying us a visit soon. In the meantime, I'm 3/3 with these sunflowers :-\ ... Better luck next time?
