The Sunflower

There lay the last large stalk.

I was so upset.  The kangaroos have been, it seems to me, systematically destroying all the plants I’m watching grow.  All very well to say they need the nutrient; it does nothing to ease how I feel.

Last spring a couple of sunflowers came up of their own accord and I loved their brightness, their loud and large statement to the world of what they were.  In due course I collected the seeds and planted some around my new blue water tanks, imagining how good the bright yellow would look with the blue tanks, blue sky and greenery around them.  None of them came up but I was away and had more seeds so when I returned I planted some in pottles so I could tend to their germination and early growth.

Well eventually some made their way to assorted places around the garden and I was happily surprised to see two other plants come up where last year’s sunflowers had been.  These did best of all, telling me not-so-subtly that they didn’t need careful tending in pottles prior to being planted.

It was exciting watching these and the others grow.  The former were in a raised garden bed and already the plant was so high that no kangaroo could ever reach the tops.

Not so the ones I had planted out.  One morning I was disappointed to see that they’d all been nibbled down, and with only the stalk remaining, while they tried to throw out a few shoots in the ensuing week or two, they eventually succumbed to further attack.

I said to myself (as others had said to me) that the whole process was to do with something I needed to feel.  Well, I did notice that my enjoyment of the kangaroos around the house became a little discoloured, even touched on feeling a little bit angry (horror!)

Then last week I woke and one of the two big plants in the garden bed was no more than a broken stalk, with the rest on the ground, and the other had all its leaves eaten as far as the animal had been able to reach. 

Now I knew I was angry.  I raged and cried a bit, and felt somehow that the last remaining flower, which was about to bloom, would make it.  Only another day or two.

And now, this morning, I see only another broken stalk with the remains on the ground beside it.  I’m no closer to not minding about it.  I’m no closer to loving the animal that I’m told needs it more than me.  I’m just sad about how unfair it feels to want something innocuous, just some simple thing of beauty to enjoy, and to have it taken from me.

And what I now see more clearly is that it does no good to tell myself how I love animals (or people) when I actually feel I’m not being loved back, that the truth for me at present is that there is a nugget inside of feeling very unloved – and until I allow this I will never truly be in a position where I can love unconditionally.