If you want a plant to die, just give it to me. It might not happen right away, but its fate is sealed. It’s not because I don’t care about them or do my best to care for them, I just don’t have a clue what I’m doing. I can follow instructions for the most part, but once things begin to derail, I have no idea how to right the wrong, and the situation spirals out of control until it’s too far gone to save.
The thing is, I don’t like to call it quits. I try my best to bring it back. My husband, who is excellent with plants, has told me on more than one occasion to toss a plant out long before I was willing to admit defeat. Here lies my story of sunflowers.
This spring, I decided to plant 2-year-old sunflower seeds and see if I could have them in my backyard. There were apparently three separate varieties.
I babied them indoors, trying to remember to water them, propping them up. One tiny one sprouted and bloomed, long before the others. But the rest of the seeds began to grow taller and taller. Eventually, they made their home outdoors, but still being carefully tended. However, they were no longer in my normal line of sight, and it was hot outside. I forgot them for a few days, and they didn’t handle it well.
My husband said they wouldn’t survive. He thought I should throw the towel in. But I wasn’t willing to give up. I soaked them and tried to remember them. Low and behold, They made it. Well, all but one. One of them just didn’t have the constitution to survive. We won’t count that one.
I transplanted them to a bigger container, staked them with larger stakes, and continued. The flowers began to bloom.
However, for some reason, the stakes weren’t deep enough and repeatedly the plants would fall over. A heavy wind, or for no apparent reason, they would topple. My husband found it humorous the number of times I staked and re-staked these flowers. But If there was any possibility they would survive, I was going to keep at it.
Then a storm hit. The stalk with the largest blossom snapped.
A crack several inches long slip straight up the stalk. All seemed lost. But I remembered reading about grafting and using plastic wrap to aid in healing plants. So I wrapped it up, tied it on, and re-staked the stalk.
Crazy thing is, it worked. That flower not only stayed healthy, but the stalk produced several other buds and flowers many weeks after the storm.
I think this is sometimes how life is.
Things look dead. They seem beyond repair. We wonder why we try, why we bother. Were all our efforts for nought? But their is a resilience we sometime fail to see. There is beauty hidden in the depths of things that look. hopeless. Sometimes we need to keep going and wait to see what God is going to bring out of it all.
The flowers that bloomed from this broken stem were bold and beautiful. The brought me delight all summer. And I have already begun harvesting the seeds. I have more seeds now, even after the birds had their fill, than what I began with. I am already dreaming about what year will bring.
Like my sunflower seeds, God has made hopeless things fruitful. Life out of death. And it is glorious. He is glorious.