Off with their heads!

Josh was just looking over my shoulder at my dashboard for my blog and noticed that I have followers.
"You have followers? That's not as good as henchmen," says the man who has his user language on Facebook set to Pirate English. I thought that would be a good segue into my theme tonight, which involves decapitation. Of sunflowers, mind you. No blood.

Today we harvested the first of the sunflowers. I have been irrigating them for weeks with coyote piss to dissuade the squirrels from stealing them before they were ripe. I have even run after some bolder squirrels yelling in my determination to preserve some of the flowers until the end of the season. Josh, the pirate, outdid me and sprayed some of the squirrels directly while running after them and swearing. Despite all efforts, as many as one-third of the giant sunflowers were headless shortly after opening.

I have not grown sunflowers since I was in elementary school. At the time, I had a pet hamster and a few plants in my bedroom. I kept the hamster food next to my plants on my desk, and being careless, I occasionally spilled some of the food, which was a collection of seeds. I often had a blade of grass or two pop up in the plant pots, and once a couple of sunflower seeds sprouted. My mom let me transplant them into the garden, and somehow they grew to fruit without squirrel banditry. The squirrels of my childhood neighbourhood were insatiable for tulips, but my sunflowers were unmolested. I don't recall much how big they were, or how pretty the flowers, but I remember being blown away by the intensity of the flavour of the seeds. Eaten raw, they made the packaged roasted seeds I loved taste like cardboard in comparison. I could never imagine growing my own garden devoid of this delicacy.

You may recall from an earlier post that sunflowers were a big bone of contention earlier this summer. In fact, the only fight Josh and I had in the longest time was over sunflowers. Being clueless when we planted seeds, I planted a lot of sunflowers, some small ones and some giant ones, expecting a low survival rate. It turns out sunflowers are extremely hardy. The one I tossed in anger (during the famous argument) towards the compost bin snapped, and the leaf touching the earth acted like a root and sustained the plant to continue growing crookedly. Josh was warned by his mother that sunflowers will interfere with the growth of the plants around them, and did not want them in the sunny spots of the vegetable garden. I did end up giving away plenty of them to anyone who would take them, but had a few in the vegetables and more along the sidewalk in front.

The small sunflowers were quite a delight. They were multicoloured, in shades of red-orange-yellow, and produced as many as six flowers per stalk. The same plant would have flowers of different colour combinations. They were small, maybe three inches across the entire flower, petals included. In the morning, they were all facing the east. When I came home from work they had all turned to face west (cool trick!) and on cloudy days, the flowers faced every which way in a confused manner. They have personality. And they are sunny and fun. They are the only plant in my garden that I felt compelled to greet and chat with. It sounds odd, but I wished them good morning and greeted them when I came home. They seemed to be smiling at me. They were how I fantasized my children could be. I miss them. They bloomed early in the season, and produced tiny miniature sunflower seeds which were not worth separating and roasting. Our parrotlet, however, is also a miniature and finds the seeds the perfect size. We have frozen the mini-sunflower heads and take them out for treats (birdy num-nums!).

I have been holding out for the big ones. I was skeptical that we would have success. The flowers I planted in the vegetable garden (four) were decapitated too easily. They were planted along the side of the fence which has large trees adjacent at several points. It is in fact a squirrel highway and my flowers were a truck stop along the way. Those four were the largest and strongest of the plants. They grew in the richly fertilized beds and looked all the better for it. The ones I planted in the front had half the amount of sunlight, were planted in solid clay in close proximity to a spruce tree. They looked spindly and needed to be propped up. I had not prepared their beds because I had planned to put them in the back. Josh compromised and let me have space for four only and I had to find any spot to throw them in the ground. It turns out that the spindly ones put all their strength into producing massive heads. At least the ones which survived did. I lost a number of them, and the squirrels helped themselves to a few of the heads early on before they really developed. Once I got more aggressive with marking my territory, I was able to sustain 8 to 10 of them to maturity.

Based on my past experience with corn, I have been checking the flowers daily for a month to see if the seeds were ready to harvest them in the nick of time. It has been raining all week, so I was concerned that the urine would be washed out. The squirrels have been washed out too, so all was well.

This morning, I picked a seed and lo and behold, it was hardened and had grey stripes upon its white shell! I opened it and put it to my lips. Hallelujah!! I had not tasted such intense sunfloweriness for decades! The crisp juiciness of the fruit, the fullness of the flavour! I ran back into the house and called Josh.
"Harvest the sunflowers today! They are ready!"

As I walked to the metro, rode the train and the bus, sat in my office working on a budget report, I cou

ld still taste the sweetness in my mouth for hours after eating one single seed. Tonight we feast!

Upon arriving home, half of the sunflowers are headless. As I write this, Dreydle the parrotlet is sampling his first of the giant sunflower seeds. He is quiet, contemplative, with a contented look on his little face. Seems I will have some competition.