I read about the sunflower room in two paragraphs of a gardening column in the Indianapolis Star many years ago. I clipped the two paragraphs but not the whole column so I cannot give credit to the author. In the few sentences it described a summer activity for children – growing a sunflower room. You mark off a square in your lawn – sacred space to many homeowners – digging the sod up to form 12 to 18 inch “beds” around the square and planting giant sunflowers interspersed with rows of different kinds of sunflowers that would grow to varying heights.
I was fascinated by the idea and wanted so to be able to create one for my daughter. But apartments and rental houses and lawn proud parents prevented my acting on the whim. Now I have my own little house and a granddaughter just getting to the right age but I want a Sunflower Room not for her but for me. It sounds like a little heaven or haven for reflecting and soaking up sun alone or with others of like mind.
Really the longing must be coming from a need to have a personal retreat, mental and physical, from a happy but “full” summer house and an expatriate life style. But since I always wanted to have my cake and eat it too, I would even share it with my grown daughter and her daughter and with my friend who shares my enthusiasm for it…but by appointment only.
I sit here a thousand miles from my little house and imagine myself there. Supervising the measuring and digging (doing it myself is no longer an option) and planting. How many packets of sunflower seeds have I bought for this room but never planted? Too many!
I am sure I will have a willing little helper to keep the seeds watered until they sprout. Then we will eagerly wait for the growing, ankle high, knee high to me, hip high and head high to my helper and at last reaching over my head. I will bring my wicker chair inside and a small table for cool drinks and to rest my book on and a light blanket to cover my knees. Maybe I will add a smaller wicker chair for some small person and carry in a chair for my friend. We will all be very still and listen for bees who will no doubt want to come visit.
I will go there in the early morning to drink coffee and listen to birds. I will write pages of words for no ones eyes but mine. I will paint pictures. Will I be invisible inside the sunflower room? I wonder. Do I want to be invisible? Hum, I wonder.
It is January 18. For now I will dream about it, and plan for it and invite my friend to dream and plan for her own sunflower room. It will be our secret. And maybe, just maybe this June there will be the turning of earth and the planting of seeds.
