Accidental Gardening Project

Here’s my new accidental gardening project. Not long after we moved into this house, I bought a big bag of raw sunflower 🌻 seeds to eat. I had gotten to eat maybe a handful of them before they mysteriously disappeared. I looked for them periodically, but never found them. A couple weeks ago, Beth found them on the top shelf of the pantry when she was looking for something else entirely. 

Now if you want to hide something from a person confined to a wheelchair, put it on the highest possible shelf and put something else in front of it. Voila! You’ve just made it disappear completely as far as that person is concerned. I can’t even see anything on the back part of the top shelves of the fridge or freezer. Forget the pantry.

Anyway, they were out of date and not smelling or tasting too fresh so I decided to toss them out to the birds, only I kept forgetting to do it. Finally I remembered one day and flung the entire bag out handful by handful until it was all gone. That night it started raining and didn’t stop for a few days. I felt sort of like I was back in Seattle, only it was about 20 degrees warmer. Unlike Seattle, the winter is our dry season so this nonstop rain in winter was quite the anomaly.

As you might have guessed already, that rain beat the seeds into the moist ground where they germinated and sprung up in patches all around the yard. Ahem. I hadn’t meant to do that, but there they were everywhere. I decided to let them grow a few days to establish a good root system. After a few more days, Beth got on our heavy duty scooter and went around the yard pulling up sunflowers by the handful. I then potted the best ones in some clay pots and hoped for the best. My first two pots struggled a bit the first couple days after the transplant before becoming more stabilized and looking as though they might make it. 

When Beth told her brother about it, he asked if I could start some plants for him to place in the garden he started in memory of his wife who just passed in November. Naomi loved sunflowers. 🌻I was thrilled to start a new pot for him, so Beth grabbed some more “volunteers “ from the yard and I planted them. No first day struggling or anything. They are already getting cozy in their new bed. 

The more I have thought about this whole series of coincidences, including the fact that the mowers hadn’t been here in a couple weeks, the more it feels like Naomi is working on the other side to put sunflowers in her garden at her home on this side of the veil. I’m delighted to be her hands on this side helping to make this happen. The more I work on my “accidental gardening project,” the more sure I am that there is nothing accidental about it. There is a design and purpose behind it. Of that I am certain. 

Naomi’s pot of sunflower 🌻 starts is the single one in the photo. I had already put my two pots together. I am really looking forward to seeing how this works out. I bet that pot produces the best sunflowers ever! 

I love you, Naomi! Thanks for letting me participate in this project for you and thanks for the kitty and butterfly quilt you picked out for Christmas for me before you left this world. It made me cry. It is precious to me.