Was it just over a month ago
Fremantle for me was all aglow
With brave red poppies on the street?
Now everywhere I go I meet
Sunflowers, big leaved and tall,
Bold yellow against sky and wall.
From whence they came who can tell?
Untended and not watered well,
Under the glaring sun they stand,
Smiling, proclaiming, ”Ain’t life grand!”
PS And here’s a picture from Fremantle where sunflowers grow!”
NOTES
I have to thank a real estate agent, Paul Donnelly, for lifting me out of my writer’s block and thinking about versifying again. About sunflowers though, certainly not politics! Not yet, anyway. He has sent me, and I imagine every other householder in Freo, a pack of ‘Sunbird’ sunflower seeds and suggested we plant them on our verges and in our gardens, photograph their progress and send them in to his photo competition. Which I shall do, but that has sent me back to my polliepomes site to pull up a draft of a Sunflowers poem from a post I did for Cafe Whispers back in 2010. Wow! How time flies!
A natural extension of the poppies story came to me on my daily walks here in Fremantle. I have always been impressed by the sunflowers growing wild on our streets every spring. as I leave the house for my morning walk with Tacker. They seem to be everywhere – on nature strips, alongside stone walls and fences and in quite a few gardens too where some people are happy to leave them wherever they’ve sprung up.
Back home, I grab the secateurs and cut some so that I can enjoy them indoors, just as Vincent Van Gogh did so famously more than a century ago.
Sorry, I haven’t got the right jug or background to really recapture his mood! And I don’t yet know how to cut out the extraneous bits! Still, being very new to a digital camera and transferring these pictures to my computer I am beside myself with amazement at what I see before me! Inevitably though a poem emerged. So, in my own small way, I too have been inspired to create by sunflowers and write…….
Sadly though, this year 2014, there are far fewer sunflowers than in previous years. My initially healthy little seedlings from Paul’s seeds have not not survived. Surely those two very hot days shouldn’t have killed them off? As far as I could see even before Christmas there were fewer young flowers on the street…….some…….but not as many as in previous years. And that pre-dated our heat wave last week. Does anyone know about sunflowers and their growth patterns?
POST SCRIPT, 12/12/15. Had to make a note here of my discovery only today (or is it re-discovery?) of the Chinese dissident artist Ai Wei Wei. I was drawn to his work ‘Sunflower Seeds’ once before, I think. Anyway after his arrest in 2011 he was conditionally released in late 2015 and now recently given his passport back and freedom to travel abroad. Was this what I saw, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_Weiweire? or has there been more recent news of him? He seems to have been imprisoned and recently released in China since his days of international fame in assisting with the design of the Beijing Olympic Stadium. Ostensibly his crime is not for his outspokenness but s0-called ‘economic’ crimes, or tax evasion. After all, he did make millions out of his international fame, and particularly his ‘Sunflower Seeds’ which employed hundreds of ceramic craftsmen in the handmaking of millions of sunflower seeds.
Anyway today is a good day, at the end of Spring and the start of Summer, 2015, here in Western Australia to write about Sunflowers again since I have been garnering Sunflower seedlings from our suburban sidewalks here. Well not so much ‘garnering‘ as rescuing them since they were already wilting in the early morning sun as Tacker and I walked down to the coffee strip for breakfast. I’ll keep them alive and thriving as well as I can in my own front yard, aware, as each precious day passes in this my 80th year, that we all live on borrowed, or is that gifted time? Meantime we must, Carpe Diem!
COMMENTS
Patriciawa, 01/02/15, Found the first few comments below on an old site when I was cleaning up and dumping stuff this morning. Had second thoughts about trashing these, the first compliments I’d ever had on my writing! Seems like yesterday Miglo (Michael Taylor) was encouraging me to write. He published the Sunflowers poem there and I copied it all with the comments to my own site, not knowing then that I could just link it. Amazing place, the Internet, isn’t it.
Cheryl Rourke, 30/12/10, Wonderful sunflowers!
Mobius Ecko, 30/12/10. Agree with the others Patricia, good effort!
Miglo, 30/12/10, Thank you for this lovely post, Patricia
Lyn Sherwood, 30/12/10, Great poem, and great photo (it could almost be Greece!).
Gillian, 30/12/10, Lovely Mum. The photos look fantastic too. Well done.
nasking, 01/01/11, Lovely Patricia. Poem & pics. Luv a positive thread. Thnx.
Michael Taylor, 16/01/14,
……but that has sent me back to my polliepomes site to pull up a draft of a Sunflowers poem from a post I did for Cafe Whispers back in 2010….
Wow! How time flies! Has it really been that long, Patricia? Incredible. Or should I say – have I been around that long. (Great to see you posting again though.)
Sarah Stapleton, 15/12/14. Your poem makes me nostalgic for poppies! Lovely picture of the sunflowers on my boundary. Van Gogh is not bad either.
Patriciawa, 03/01/15. Yes, Sarah, it is your boundary wall with its sunflowers. Lovely, isn’t it?
Who said the camera cannot lie? It’s surely not so long ago? But now worldwide we hear the sigh That politicans in the know Can make that very truth a lie.
richo, 02/08/13, All that maybe true and rightly or wrongly her fate was sealed the day she did Kevin in. Now having said that I concur she was a Prime Minister who got things done. I suspect what she failed to do was to sell her many achievements. In the end if you can’t communicate it clearly you are kind of stuffed.
my say, 02/08/13, julia never had a chance,she was hounded out of office by a coalition government ,who never got over loosing in 2010 to a woman, by the murdoch media, who believe their man abbott was born to rule,and by some in her own party, although i don’t agree with everything rudd has done i will still vote labor as to not let julia down for all the good policies that she had got passed in the parlament. we have a lot to thank her for
Gilly, 02/08/13, Another lie about Julia. “Julia did Kevin in”, absolute rubbish, the Labour caucus voted out a man who is not a leader but someone who could never function as a leader. A leader leads others, to do this others need to be trusted, respected and taken into consideration. Kevin was too full of himself to ever have any responsibility for others. As for a communicator, it takes two for communication, someone to listen. Nobody wanted to listen about Government, all the focus was on politics. One of the greatest PMs the country has had was not a politician, she was too honest and focused on what she was elected to do, an adult who was not trapped into playing the immature game of politics.
Patricia Bensted, 02/08/13, Julia did Kevin In. What a load of rubbish. Rudd went into Julias office and abused her for not being loyal to him and this is after she REFUSED to go against him. She wasmade a scapegoat for the likes of Shorten etc: so get all your facts straight. I for one will miss the kind, compassionate lady. What she has done for the women ofAustralia and the World for that matter is remarkable. I will always voteLabor because I am aLabor person not like some of the friends of Rudd who even gave up their Membership of the Labor Party, so one must ask did they resign from the Party because Rudd was ousted or was it because a woman took his place. Methinks the latter.
Sandra, 02/08/13, Gilly, Patricia couldn’t agree more. We will never know just what went down at either of the deposings. All I know is that I miss that wonderful courageous lady’s smile, her compassion etc. Don’t think that the new team is as good as hers, they have a slightly different agenda. Hope Bowen is as good at managing the books as Swanny was. Hope that Gonski doesn’t get watered down either. Julia got so many good things through didn’t she. Miss her heaps.
freedomsmoker, 02/08/13, My only feeling was relief when Gillard got killed off. She definitely evoked polarized opinions. Worst prime minister in Australian history in my opinion.
Mobius Ecko, 02/08/13, ……….can you tell us why she was the worst PM using something like facts. Oh and it wasn’t Gillard who polarised opinions, that would be Abbott and the MSM lies and deceptions putting Gillard into a no win situation no matter what she did or said. My opinion she was the best PM we’ve had, and the runs are on the board to prove it.
richo, 02/08/13, Whatever the reality is……………..the perception out there is that she did Kevin in. Whether she did or didn’t she was part of it………
bilko, 02/08/13, PatriciaWA, Well said, now you have brought out the mists in my old tired eyes once again. Sad that Julia has vanished from the airwaves but not forgotten in our hearts.