Dept. of Small Joys

Sunflowers

I don't know what it is about sunflowers. I never used to pay attention to them because they don't have a spectacular aroma, and I'm a sucker for floral perfumes. Yes, when you get close to them there's that green smell that's very heady if you let it fully into your lungs, but it wasn't what I thought of as what a flower should smell like.

But somehow over the last couple of years they have become one of my favorite flowers. I began looking for them in various corners of my neighborhood, and I saw them on corners, and in peoples' gardens, and they seemed to signal a peaceful neighborhood, at least in my mind. I remember showing pictures in a post a couple of years ago of at least one home a couple of blocks away from our place, where someone had planted sunflowers on either side of the sidewalk in front of their home. They had grown so tall that they formed a bit of a arch made of black and golden flowers over the sidewalk. I was so sad the next year when there were no more sunflowers on the parkway.

This year, I found myself looking for more sunflowers and when our delightfully odd neighbor Marianne planted sunflowers on our particular parkway sward, I watched them grow taller and taller outside our office windows. And it didn't matter how bad I might feel, or how bad a day I might have been having - when I'd look out and see those flowers, growing taller and taller, I'd feel just that little bit better.

And now I don't care that they don't have a perfume. I like the green smell, and the gold petals and what they do for my heart.