Saturday, August 11, 2007

Serendipity

My husband's always been big on composting. Whenever he has a watermelon rind or potato peelings, he throws them out into the garden area. It doesn't look terribly pretty until it's been dug under, but we do get some nice green plants.

My husband is also big into food storage, and we had a one-hundred pound bag of sunflower seeds, out of the shell. With about five pounds left, we discovered they'd gone stale, so he pitched them out into the yard, not really thinking about it.

It was only a matter of days before those seeds started to sprout, and we now have a sunflower forest right in the center of our yard. Picture it -- the yard's not very wide, being a trailer house yard, and right in the center, a stand of sunflower plants that will soon reach the ledge of my kitchen window in height.

My husband wasn't expecting those seeds to sprout -- he thought they had to be in the shell to be any good. But now we've got over fifty plants out there, ready to give us thousands of seeds each. We'll be busy, come harvesting time, but grateful for the way our seeds are being returned to us, pressed down and running over.

In the meantime, our yard looks silly, we're getting comments from neighbors, and we're never tossing seeds out there willy-nilly again.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Good thing sunflowers are so pretty. And, when they've delivered their harvest, you can always pull them up and plant some more right under the windowsill next year.

Jennifer @ Fruit of My Hands said...

Too funny! I love sunflowers...on the drive from NV to Utah, there's a place where it is filled with sunflowers, its so beautiful after all the desert landscapes. Since I've been doing peaches, I was thinkings its too bad I don't compost, as I have tons of peelings & junk. But I know the dogs would make short work of it & it would be all over the yard. Plus, the random pit in there would be sure to sprout & I'd have a peach orchard.

Shanna Blythe said...

Sunflowers are so much fun. My sister tries to do a sunflower house every year. She likes the seeds more for the birds, but they plant a large space and weed out the middle. When it is all grown you have a sunflower house where you can go into the middle and be surrounded by flowers!

Danyelle Ferguson said...

Oh. My. Gosh. I can't believe it! I'm sitting here trying to imagine all those sunflowers in the middle of the yard - and all I can do is laugh and laugh and laugh. Oh my. I wish I were there to actually see it! You just totally made my day. Thanks!

kris said...

How fun! I can just picture all those sunflowers nodding in the sun right under your window. I love it!

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