Three days ago, I took a photo of this newly blooming sunflower that had come up by the corner of our house. Something had already eaten holes in many of the plant's leaves, but it was still healthy and I was glad I hadn't pulled it out as a "weed".
A volunteer, the plant is probably from bird seed but, perhaps, from a seed that came into the yard in mulch, or on a muddy shoe, or carried in by a bird. After I took the photo, I was struck by how light yellow the center was, since I usually think of "wild" sunflowers as having dark brown centers.
So when I booted up my photo program this morning and saw the photo staring at me again, I ran outside to snap a shot of the same sunflower, curious to see how it looked today, 3 days later. The center has definitely darkened as it has aged, and the bloom now droops, instead of holding its face up to the sky.
It's still beautiful, but what really caught my eye this morning was the little green metallic bee that was busily feeding on the nectar and the pollen that the sunflower was producing. I stooped to get below the flower a bit and zoomed in a little closer....
As I watched the little bee busily foraging and eating, I found myself wondering what life would be like lived on this scale all the time?
What would it be like to root around and get covered in pollen grains as you sipped nectar from each individual floret? To see a sunflower as large as a house, each floret as big as a small barrel? To have the center of a sunflower look like a deep cave you would fall into?
To fly from blossom to blossom, only Earth-bound when you land on each flower or when you land on your nest to provision it for your children, whom you'll never see?
Yes, what
would it be like to spend all your waking hours working on a home, complete with food, for children you'll never meet...or even see? Talk about living on faith!
The world around me, even the world in my own backyard, never fails to amaze me. What a complex and interwoven series of lives "life" truly is!
2 comments:
I wonder...a lot. Life on another scale is how I learned that crocus are fragrant.
I've had a volunteer sunflower this year as well. Mine has to be from bird seed because it's just to the right of the feeder. It also is drooping and has holes in it's leaves but it's been blooming at least two weeks.
I usually always have volunteer bird seed sunflowers but this year I don't. I think it would be nerve wracking to have to forage for food, but that's a human perspective. I recently discovered that chemical spray fungicides also act as pesticides since a fungus is considered a pest. I wonder how aware insects are of environmental poisons?
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