Not one for wasting precious garden space on growing something I can't eat, I've never bothered much with flowers. Yes, pretty. Yes, fragrant. Yes, probably earth's way of smiling, but without a more practical function, like frying, roasting, or braising, it's not just the soil space I can't justify, but the time and energy required to raise these little babies too.
It's a peasant thing. When you've grown up with parents who grew what they ate in their home country, and much of what they ate in Australia, flowers always took a back seat to beans, broccoli and basil, unless, of course, they were zucchini flowers chopped into a glistening zucchini, potato and noddle soup, finished too with a sweet sprig of the said basil.
So, what possessed me pop a few sunflower seeds in? I've always loved yellow gerberas, none that I've ever grown of course, but their happy, smiling, nodding heads always pushed my sentimental buttons. Sunflowers have the same bright disposition so, after I was given a small packet of seeds at a garden show, I tossed a couple in and, with the busy-ness of life, quickly forgot about them.
Some time later, I couldn't make out 'the weeds' that were growing along the back fence. (Yep, it's been pretty crazy busy of late). Perplexed, I left them in in case they turned out to be something I could munch on. It finally dawned on me once they reached about waist height - and I did a little skip of glee around the garden. I was stoked - or showered with sunflower anticipation. I was being smiled upon indeed.
The results are more than I could have imagined or expected. The sunflowers I've seen usually have one long stem with one flower perched atop. My babies have so many heads, so many flowers, so many buds waiting to bloom with just another good ray or two of summer sun, I'm buzzing like the bees buzzing around my babies with shared excitement. Either these smiles are of a different variety or I'm more blessed that I thought - and I'm running with the latter.Of course, when I showed my gardener - an elderly Italian from the same village as my parents who basically does the lawns and shares produce and good food stories with me - he gave me a non-plussed, almost confused look. Always polite and forever diplomatic, he searched for his words a bit and then said, "Um... You can eat the seeds of those, can't you?"
Foodliterary Regards,
Julia
