Hello my dear friends and family wherever you may find yourselves this October evening. From here along the western side of the Rocky Mountains, I'm sitting on the bedroom floor typing this blog post tonight. It's been a good day, cool and crisp without even a trace around the valley of the snow that we saw two nights ago. All around us though the mountains are dusted with it, even the little adobes saw their first white coat when the storm earlier this week passed through. The sudden change in weather necessitated the lighting of the gas heating stove in the living room here and the removal of the outdoor hoses from the faucet. I think winter is wanting to "cut in" and take the baton from fall just a little bit ahead of schedule some times and for the "record", I'm not ready for that yet. But since we have absolutely no more control over the weather than the weather guy himself, guess we shall take what we get and be glad it's no worse. When winter finally does arrive, it cannot last forever. It only thinks that it can.
We took advantage of the pleasant weather this afternoon to get some things taken care of outside before we make the journey home to Kansas later on this upcoming week. While Mike mowed the lawn, I decided it was time to shell out the dried sunflower heads that we had harvested from the few sunflowers that grew this year. Since they had been drying for well over a month, I knew that they would be just about right for the shelling and they were.
As I was removing the seeds from the sunflower heads, I couldn't help but think back to that day in early to mid-March this year when a flatlander girl (that'd be me) decided she would plant some Russian Mammoth sunflowers along side the fence row, adjacent to the alfalfa field. It was a great day weather-wise and I was happy as could be that I would be planting my state's official "flower" here in Montrose County, Colorado. I had high hopes for them growing to be nearly 11 feet tall. When I dream, I like to dream big!
When we arrived in Montrose on the 24th day of May, I was surprised to see that only a few of the seeds I'd planted had even came up. I couldn't believe it! I'd been growing Russian Mammoth sunflowers for many years and always had good luck, but not this time. What in the heck had gone wrong? I counted 7 plants that had made it out of the more that 100 seeds that I had planted in the soil that day not even two months before. This already homesick Kansas girl became even more sad at the realization that the one remembrance of home that she had counted on was now going to be referred to by the names of "Slim and None". Geesch, that was an awful moment in those early days here.
Even though so few had made it and survived, I became determined to nurture the "seven" along and see how tall they would grow to be. Day after day, I watered them and talked to them and told them, just like in the book "Frog and Toad's Garden", that they needed to GROW! They actually managed to do that, however slow and sure that might have been. Those flowers, formally known as "Helianthus Annuus", stood tall and braved the early morning easterly winds off of Cerro Summit. They withstood the monsoon rains in July and actually started to look like the tall giants I was used to growing. It was so fun to take their pictures along the way...kinda like a mom taking a snapshot of her little ones at all the various stages of life. Here were mine!
Right before the monsoon rains arrived one July day...a lone sunflower stands vigil against the easterly winds.
With the stately Cottonwood tree in the background and the blue Colorado sky around it, this beautiful bloom posed for a happy picture in early August. The other 6 plants were soon to follow. I love sunflowers! Can you tell?
By early September it became apparent that the time had come to harvest the heads of the sunflowers, now filled to the brim with meaty seeds. It was a rather unceremonious event with me taking the scissors and cutting off the drying heads and Mike pulling up the remaining stalks. Within about 15 minutes, the little plot of land that had been so very important to me this summer, was barren of all plant life. As from the "Good Book" in Ecclesiastes we read that "to everything there is a season", well the sunflowers' time had come to pass.
There were not very many, certainly not a crop to boast about, but they represented a summer's labour that was filled with love. From the table they went to the shed to dry, with the hope that the mice wouldn't find them out there. Glad to say that when I went to bring them out this afternoon, they were in great shape.
In short order, we were able to shell out all of the seeds, working at it for less than 15 minutes. When we were finished, we had a coffee can full of seeds that will provide sustenance, at least for a while this winter, to the birds of the field. And since we filled a huge coffee can up with them, I guess I would have to say that I have gotten my seed back and then some. So really in all actuality, I had little to complain about.
Those seed filled sunflower heads sure do remind me a lot of my geraniums that struggled all summer long to make it, and those geraniums? They remind me a lot of me. It was a tough summer, a time of a lot of getting used to life for all things concerned here, plants and people alike. There were many times that I was sure I wouldn't make it here in Colorado, several instances when I thought that my homesickness and loneliness here would probably do me in. But they did not. I stayed, dug in a little deeper, and from extremely deep inside of my belly I found the courage to just keep trying. It hasn't been easy but it has worked. Lots of things saved me here....the sunflowers, the deer, the two baby raccoons that ended up dying anyway, the rainbow filled skies after the monsoon rains came, the messages of encouragement that flowed in from back home in Kansas and a lot of other places too. Lots of people saved me......my first friend here in Montrose named Pat (she owns the laundry facility that we use), all the great people at the Human Touch where I worked all summer long as a CNA, dear sweet Mrs. Deltondo who lives across the road from us, the kid that always takes my money in the McDonald's drive-thru who actually can count change pretty dang good, Cody the kid who works at Olathe's version of the Kwik Shop who no longer asks me if I didn't get enough sleep last night when he sees me buying a diet Mt. Dew and a Five Hour Energy bottle because now he just knows better, everyone at Olathe Elementary, and last but not least my husband Mike who listened to me say over and over at first "I MISS HOME". Geesch, talk about your blessings, I'm figuring that I am one blessed woman and then some. God has been so good to me.
Well it's time to get going and start this day. Just checked the weather forecast for later on this week when we want to leave to get home. Looks like the snow will stay off of Monarch Pass until Friday and that should allow us the time we need to make it over. From our house to the pass is about 2 1/2 hours and since we plan to leave here by 4:30, we should do ok. Looking forward to seeing everyone back there in Reno County, Kansas! Take care, be well and at peace with your lives dear friends and family. You are much loved by me.
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When we put the seeds over into the feeder next to the alfalfa field, I asked Mike what kinds of birds might eat them here in Colorado. He told me that probably it would just be the sparrows, the lowliest of the birds. So it worked out great after all and since God's eye is always on the sparrow it would seem right and fit that they would come to eat at this spot on the earth.
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