Last Easter Lee & I planted sunflower seeds as part of a creative prayer labyrinth that our church did during Holy Week. The seeds were symbolic of the prayers we had prayed for the world, our community & ourselves whilst walking around the labyrinth. We took our planted seeds home in little plastic cups & nurtured them on the windowsill in our kitchen.
After a couple of months I planted them out in our garden where they flourished much to my delight! Last time I planted seeds as a symbol of new life & God working through me the seedlings died!! Ooops!
This time both my sunflower & Lee's reached full potential. In fact, my sunflower went overboard & had fourteen heads on the one stalk!!
It was lovely throughout our rather grey summer to look out of the living room window & see all the large yellow heads bobbing & swaying in the wind (& rain sometimes).
It really made me smile to see the sunflowers especially as they helped me to remember the time I spent in meditative prayer when I planted them. It was lovely to be able to keep thinking back to that time with God at Easter. Seeing something physical that had grown helped me to remember that my prayers are fruitful & purposeful even when I can't see what has happened as a result of them.
It was also lovely to see that the bright flowers were bringing insects into our garden. I like bees!
We did, of course, have some sunny days over the summer & I took the opportunity to photograph the sunflowers. They looked stunning against the bright blue skies!
When the flowers had faded I cut the heads down. Doesn't this one look HUGE next to Annie-Joy?!
I love the patterns the seeds make & the colours in the seed holders. So pretty & frivolous!
It amazes me how over the top & extravagant God has made the natural world. All these seeds from one plant! Plenty for the birds & insects to eat, plenty to fall to the ground & grow new plants for next year & probably with a lot still left over!
Annie-Joy helped to pick all the seeds out of the heads & we collected them in a bucket. We will feed the birds with them over the winter. Next year I hope to plant rows & rows of sunflowers like
Dawn Isaac's sunflower alley! Well, perhaps that's a little bit ambitious, but I can dream! :o)
Last Easter Lee & I planted sunflower seeds as part of a creative prayer labyrinth that our church did during Holy Week. The seeds were symbolic of the prayers we had prayed for the world, our community & ourselves whilst walking around the labyrinth. We took our planted seeds home in little plastic cups & nurtured them on the windowsill in our kitchen.
After a couple of months I planted them out in our garden where they flourished much to my delight! Last time I planted seeds as a symbol of new life & God working through me the seedlings died!! Ooops!
This time both my sunflower & Lee's reached full potential. In fact, my sunflower went overboard & had fourteen heads on the one stalk!! 
It was lovely throughout our rather grey summer to look out of the living room window & see all the large yellow heads bobbing & swaying in the wind (& rain sometimes).
It really made me smile to see the sunflowers especially as they helped me to remember the time I spent in meditative prayer when I planted them. It was lovely to be able to keep thinking back to that time with God at Easter. Seeing something physical that had grown helped me to remember that my prayers are fruitful & purposeful even when I can't see what has happened as a result of them.
It was also lovely to see that the bright flowers were bringing insects into our garden. I like bees!
We did, of course, have some sunny days over the summer & I took the opportunity to photograph the sunflowers. They looked stunning against the bright blue skies!
When the flowers had faded I cut the heads down. Doesn't this one look HUGE next to Annie-Joy?!
I love the patterns the seeds make & the colours in the seed holders. So pretty & frivolous!
It amazes me how over the top & extravagant God has made the natural world. All these seeds from one plant! Plenty for the birds & insects to eat, plenty to fall to the ground & grow new plants for next year & probably with a lot still left over!
Annie-Joy helped to pick all the seeds out of the heads & we collected them in a bucket. We will feed the birds with them over the winter. Next year I hope to plant rows & rows of sunflowers like Dawn Isaac's sunflower alley! Well, perhaps that's a little bit ambitious, but I can dream! :o)
3 comments:
Beautiful words and pictures!
DaddyO xxxxxx
A sunflower alley sounds fun even in Wavertree!
God Bless
Mum xx
Wow how huge are they???! Lovely! xxx
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