Backyard Sunflowers and Morning Glories, Me and My Little Sweet Pea
A story that starts off innocently enough, but decided to take a most unexpected, deeply meaningful turn toward my heart.
Backyard Sunflowers and Morning Glories, Me and My Little Sweet Pea belongs to the following groups:
Creative, Talented, and UnknownAbout a week before Mother’s Day this year, Ava and I set out to stock up on our impatients and vinca vines, hibiscus, and a whole slew of brilliant flowers to fill our flower pots and gardens surrounding our home. This has been our ritual ever since we moved back to Ohio when she was a wee babe. This year, as we cruised through the local floral nursery to select our favorite blooms, Ava looked up at me and asked if we could buy some of the seed packets from a revolving display, featuring an endless assortment of every kind known to man. All the colors of the rainbow were promised, from the photographs on the tiny envelopes. I gazed into her sweet, insistent eyes and there was only one answer… of course! We must have walked out of there with 20 types of seeds, about a handful or so in each pack. Since I’m known to have quite a black thumb, and I didn’t want her to get many hopes up, I did warn Ava that I could not guarantee the outcome. She didn’t seem to mind, so, as soon as we returned home and unloaded the truck, (oh, how I love fresh flowers!) we ran out back and found a good sized patch of dirt that looked perfect for her garden. We randomly tore open the goods and cast the tiny seeds here and there, no particular order was necessary, the anticipation was electrifying. In 39 years, I have never planted a seed and over time watched it shoot up through the earth, unfurl it’s foliage and burst into dazzling color. And that’s exactly what happened. Ava’s Garden is busting at the seams with a kaleidoscope of hues, an assortment of shapes and sizes galore to entertain us daily. The two most dominant varieties by far are the thick stalked, sky high sunflowers, accompanied by the multi-colored, vibrant morning glory vines that happily wind themselves tightly around and up the sunflower’s trunks. Such delightful companions, these two. The morning glories end up reaching their delicate fingers even higher than the faces of the sturdy sunflowers. And so, like the sunflower, I stand tall and strong as my beloved daughter grows like the morning glory, clinging to me as she reaches greater heights, only later will she stretch beyond me toward the sun and a life all her own.
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