Sun flowers are fascinating to me. Look at the size of it. Even the smallest flower is way bigger than the rest of the (normal) flowers. It is not enough that they are huge, they also come in screaming bright yellow. Hard to miss.

Believe it or not, we once had ONE sun flower in our ‘back yard’. Back yard is the term I use loosely to describe a huge bucket of soil next to my deck. Mr 8 was given a free pot with sun flower seed already planted at a Spring Festival two years ago. I was very doubtful by the sight of that sorry looking pot with tiny sprigs in it. Sun flower? I thought. Really?

My son who was clear of all doubts and (thank God) not as jaded has his mother, believed wholeheartedly that the pot he was given was indeed a tiny seed of sun flower and it was going to grow big and strong as long as he made sure he took care of it. In the tiny plant moved from the smaller pot to the bigger one. Cut the story short, it did grow! Grew tall at first, then out came the flower. Only one flower, so tall and so big. It was so beautiful. My son was very proud.

Then what does one do after that? Surely after reading this long you are aware that I know nothing about sun flower, but I know this much now. From that tiny pot we had only ONE flower. The stem was very tall, and the flower was very big and bright. No other stem. I couldn’t even remember whether it had any leaves. The flower stayed for about a week, and went from standing tall like a young woman to crooked old lady too weak to carry its flower. I did not see it facing the sun at all times (or was I read it wrong somewhere). And then it died. That was it. Like a pet, we have it and enjoy it for awhile then it dies. It turned out I expected more from this flower then I even cared to admit, it being so magnanimous and bright. I’m sure now I have missed something. Surely there is a way to grow them like normal flowers, look at my die-hard roses, they grow and grow no matter how many times I tried to kill them.

The flower in the photo was freshly cut and still stay pretty in the vase. Did not expect it to bring out so much memory of my short stint of having one of our own from years ago.