Sunflowers

     At three o’clock on Jazz & Oysters Sunday, the sun disappeared once again from Oysterville.  Since then it has poked through the fog bank once or twice late in the afternoon, but the air remains chilly and it definitely feels like autumn.  School, always the official ‘end of summer’ no matter what the weather does or the calendar says, begins September 1^st this year.  Hard to believe.
     I dragged my feet on composting all the left-over sunflowers from the wedding excitements of the weekend.  Perhaps I thought that those cheery blossoms would somehow outlast the returning gray skies.  Well, they did for a day or two.
     People tell me that sunflowers are easy to grow.  “I just tossed a handful of sunflower seeds out in the garden,” Vera Karnofski told me during the Edible Garden Tour.  The results were spectacular.  But no matter how carefully, casually, or continually I have planted their seeds, and no matter what varieties I have chosen, sunflowers don’t seem to do well in our yard.  This year, with our gray summer skies, it’s understandable, but every year isn’t gray in Oysterville.  It only seems that way right now.
     I love sunflowers!  Some years ago Nyel and I spent three weeks visiting chateaux in the Loire Valley in France.   We were there in ‘sunflower season’ and as we explored the area we passed acres and acres, miles and miles of blooms.  ‘Sunflower plantations’ they are called.  No matter what time of day we were out and about the big, cheerful blooms on one side of the road or the other always faced our way.
     It was difficult to believe that the flowers were grown for anything beyond their beauty, but they are.  I learned that the seeds are planted 45 centimeters apart, not to provide a showy landscape for passers-by, but because they are an important crop.  They are grown for the seeds which can be roasted for snack foods, of course, but also are processed into oil or margarine, sold as birdseed, or mixed into muesli.
     For the moment, anyway, we are without sun or sunflowers in Oysterville.  We try to be content with the promise of Indian summer with the oranges and yellows of chrysanthemums, and the tree leaves turning red and gold.  Surely, there will soon be an alternative to gray?