Saturday, August 15, 2009

Sunflower

During the school year last sping, Katie's teacher gave everyone a sunflower seed. They took time in class to talk about sunflowers and then each of them took a small paper cup, dumped some dirt inside and then planted their own sunflower. They left their little miniature gardens in their classroom until the end of school. Each of them carefully took their little sunflower home to watch it grow over the summer. At this time, the little sun flower was only a few inches tall.

At that point, Katie delivered her sunflower into my care. I wasn't sure what to do with it so I decided to take it out into my sprouting garden and plant it in the ground. I had no faith nor hope that this little plant would survive in the harsh outdoor environment after basking in the warm inviting climate controlled classroom. Nevertheless, we found a spot in the garden and plopped the sprout in the dirt.

Over the summer, I watched it grow, still not thinking much about the flower. I began to take serious notice of this plant after it had grown to about chest high. As it continued to grow and tower over my 5'10" frame, I knew we had something special. I took Katie out one evening and took a video of her with her sunflower. We quickly uploaded it to YouTube, and send a link to her teacher which was overjoyed to see that at least one of those sunflowers from class had reached maturity.