Garden Diaries- June (Sunny days)

Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly.    

                   - Pablo Neruda 

No, the light was not wet at all, in my part of the world. It was dry and blazing sun. Comparatively, the garden was silent – as the birds and squirrels were too hassled with heat. Yet the month of June arrived and is almost half done.

 Yellow was the dominated colour this month. The sunshine was bright since early hours and there were plenty of Coreopsis (Tickseeds) and Cosmos all around the flower beds. Even the hedges were turning yellowish green with the mercury rising to 46 degrees. Of, course there were Amaltas flowers spreading a carpet of yellow on green grass every morning but none of these were the crowning glory of the month. The month fairly and squarely belongs to my sun-enchanted, tall giant Russian Sunflowers. Even when I got the seeds, I was not sure how tall they will be. By the time flowering started, the plants were a good 7 ft  tall and had a thick stem to support multitude of big flowers …….and then, they bloomed.

 Sunflowers, in all their golden glory, are a happy sight to behold— they can brighten up a dull day for me. I always fancied a bunch of sunflowers in a tall vase by the window. But in my childhood, we mostly had smaller varieties of sunflowers, which were easy to grow and gave plenty of flowers. Few years back when I was passing through north Karnataka on a work assignment, I saw fields of sunflower plants. They made an incredibly beautiful sight. It was like a flood of yellow for miles together. Since then, I wanted to grow big sunflowers in my garden. This was my first experiment with Russian Giants and I am elated with the result. There is so much to admire about these lovely flowers.  The multipurpose plants deliver healthy snacks (seeds), useful oil, and attract numerous birds and bees. But that is not all, they have a fascinating history and legend as well.

I may be happily growing them in South East Asia today, but like potatoes, tomatoes, and corn, these sunny plants came from the Americas, though the commercialisation happened in Russia first. Evidence suggests that the plant was cultivated by American Indians in present-day Arizona and New Mexico from about 3000 BC. Some archaeologists suggest that sunflower may have been domesticated even before corn. It was used traditionally as food, medicine, dye, and oil. Spanish conquistadors exported it to the rest of the world (i.e. Europe) by around 1500. For next three centuries, the plant was spread all over Europe and was mostly used for decoration in vases. Talking of decorative sunflowers, it is difficult not to remember the famous Van Gogh paintings of sunflower in a vase or The Painter of Sunflowers, the painting by Paul Gauguin.

The credit of bringing these flowers to Russia goes to Tsar Peter the great. It is believed that he first saw sunflowers in Netherlands and was so fascinated by them that he took some back to Russia. By the 19th century, the country was planting two million acres of sunflowers every year. In 2018 also Russia remains the top grower of Sunflowers, followed by Argentina and China. Interestingly, evidence suggests that the plant got widespread approval in Russia not by the insistence of the Royalty but by the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church exempted the sunflower seed oil from the banned oils during the month of Lent.

History came to a full circle when Russian immigrants to USA in the 19th century brought back highly developed sunflower seeds that grew bigger blooms, and sparked a renewed interest in the native American plant. The native North American sunflower plant has finally come back home after a very circuitous route around the globe. Today in many states of US, they have sunflower competitions to measure the biggest ever flowers.

Talking about the global spread of sunflowers, thanks to space-gardener astronaut Don Petite, who is famous for growing zucchini and Broccoli in space (at International Space Station), Sunflowers also reached space. Well, Mr. Petite came to an amusing (yet true) conclusion when the flower did not turn out as big and grown as its cousins back on earth. He concluded that “plants are like people. They are intrinsically lazy and, they only put out as much effort as the environment requires.” I could not agree more.

Ah, Sunflower! Weary of time 

Who countest the steps of the Sun 

Seeking after that sweet golden clime 

Where the traveller's journey is done…

                    --William Blake 

Coming back to my own garden, the flowers started very slowly and then there was an unparalleled bloom of yellow all around, with one plant supporting as many as a dozen flowers. Well, it went all fine, till a pandemonium of parrots discovered their location and then the nightmare started. The flock ruined some plants within seconds till I drove them out. Luckily, I have many more plants which survived this vandalism. Incidentally, each sunflower's head is made of smaller flowers. The petals we see around the outside are called ray florets. Sunflowers can self-pollinate or take pollen blown by the wind or transported by insects. The flowers not only look like the sun; they need a lot of it. And what is more, they track sun-  a behaviour called heliotropism.  The flower buds and young blossoms will face east in the morning and follow the sun as the earth moves during the day.

What is even more interesting is that these amazing flowers are nature’s prettiest demonstration of famous Fibonacci sequence,a set in which each number is the sum of the previous two (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, ...). This sequence is nature’s favourite as it is found in everything from pineapples to pine cones. In the case of sunflowers, the tell-tale sign is the number of different seed spirals on the sunflower's face. If you count the clockwise and counter clockwise spirals that reach the outer edge, and you'll usually find a pair of numbers from the sequence: 34 and 55, or 55 and 89 , I think it is so because the nature strives to accommodate maximum possible spirals in the available space and this sequence is the most efficient way to achieve this.

Now, before it appears that my garden had nothing but sunflowers during the month, let me quickly add that to break the monotony of yellow all around, my brave little Zinnias continue to provide a colourful spread. They are impossibly pretty and even in this terrible heat give a glimpse of meadow like scene – with butterflies fluttering on them.

This month was exceptionally cruel for poor birds. Global warming is absolutely real and the temperature was soaring – making poor creatures of my garden, queue up to the water pots I have kept for them. In the afternoons, the sight is so dramatic when birds of various species flock together to jump in the water pot for a quick splash. Even my favourite owlet family is often seen near these water pots.

It is almost middle of the month and yet, no showers. Monsoon has actually arrived in other parts of India and I do hope it reaches us soon.