Legendary Short Stories: My love is a sunflower

My love is a sunflower

It was the single most, greatest, most wonderful feeling in the world AND I was living it. Just when I had given up hope on ever being with a woman, there she was right before me. We had no idea of what was to happen to us as the hours and days would progress. To be honest with you, I was just looking for a friend and so . It wasn't long before our friendship took root and without either of us knowing, like a small seed planted in rich soil and nourished with a healthy dose of water, our love began to blossom.

A seed is a curious thing. When you look at a single seed, it doesn't look like much. The smallest seed known to us cannot be seen by the naked eye. Speaking of seeds, I happen to love sunflower seeds.

Even more so, I love sunflowers, scientifically known as Helianthus. "Helia" means Sun and "anthus" is another word for flower. Helianthus is a cateogry of plants which comprise about 70 different species. All Helianthus are native to North and Central America except three species which are only found in South America.

Sunflowers grew in North America more than 1,000 years ago and were an important food for Native Americans. The sunflower is a large inflorescence which is a fancy word meaning the stems, stalks, bracts, and flowers. The flowerhead of a sunflower is actually made of many tiny flowers called florets.

The florets in the center look like the center of a normal flower while the outer florets look like yellow petals. Together, they make up something known as a "false flower." An interesting thing about sunflowers is that their design helps insects and birds to easily see the sunflower and after pollination (which is the transfer of pollen to allow for fertilization), every little flower or floret produces a seed, the yummy thing I like to eat at baseball games!

Just a few more facts about sunflowers, sunflowers are fast growing plants growing between 8 and 12 feet tall and can grow between 1.33 feet to 2.00 feet per month. The actual flower part of a sunflower can be about 11.8 inches wide which is close to the length of the ruler that might be in your desk. In 2012, the Guinness World Record for the tallest sunflower was 27 feet tall for a sunflower that was grown in Germany. The famous Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh did a series of paintings featuring and called Sunflowers.

The thing that I think is remarkable about sunflowers is that from far away they look like common daisies but when you look at them closely, you see a vast and beautifully connected display of complex patterns of individual petals and a tightly knit pattern of perfectly positioned seeds. What makes the final product truly fascinating is that it started out as a simple seed! A seed much like the seed of love I was beginning to experience as a budding romance grew between me and the lovely woman I had met.

Just like a sunflower, our love grew up rapidly, raising from the humble grounds of friendship and extending to a new found love as we stretched ourselves to the sun of our mutual attraction and desire to be with one another. Like any flower, our stem grew more sturdy day by day as we nourished it with the fertilizer and water of open communication and even hardships of the occasional struggle and squabbles which we always resolved amicably. I found that these occasional disagreements only served to make me into a better man for her. I observed that she these did the same for me.

Unlike a sunflower which blossoms and passes for a single season, our love will continue to grow for countless seasons with each passing hour and each day. To accomplish that we both need to be committed to continual communication seasoned with understanding, caring, and love. We will need to not only be the flower but also the gardener who cares for the flower.

Sometimes she will be the flower and I will be the gardener and other times, I will be the flower and she will be the gardener. Sometimes flowers require special attention to flourish and even sometimes to survive. During these times a wise gardener will take appropriate action needed to meet the specific needs of the flower so that it might weather the hardship it is facing and regain it's strength to continue in the growing process.

Similarly, either me or my woman may require special attention due to unforeseen need and hardship and to get us through this difficult time, we will need to take the special steps to make sure that the one who needs attention is taken care of and will be allowed to be healed so that growth may continue. A loving couple does these kind of things for one another and my woman and I are such a loving couple. As a result, we will draw closer in love for one another and our individual lives will draw closer to one another making us truly one.

At one point in time, the two of us were two flowers drifting alone in two separate fields. Then one day, we found ourselves planted right next to each other and we couldn't be happier because of it. It is my hope and desire that we will continue to grow closer together with each passing month, year, and decade. With a wing and a prayer this will become true for the both of us. It is with great seriousness and determination that I hope for this to be true for now and all ages because my love is a sunflower, the most beautiful sunflower of all.