At my request, my wonderful mother and I planted some Mammoth Sunflowers this season. They were so great! A very bouncy sun jungle in our front yard. The splashes of yellow and the ornate shape of the leaves kept it a fairly happy sight, even as they started to droop with the weight of their own seeds. Which means it's time to harvest!
My sister and I went on a tour through Europe with the Ambassadors of Music. The whole trip was stunning, of course. One of my favorite parts was driving from France to Switzerland, wondering why all the fields were a bright yellow, only to realize that we were driving through sunflower farms. Even the neighboring cottages had the 10-foot flowers rivaling their short roofs, towering over their clotheslines. Sunflowers are naturally a happy sight, but their sight combined with this memory makes each sunflower an instant smile. First, I recognized this opportunity as a perfectly good excuse to use my mom's meat cleaver and began hacking at a thick stalk (there were some war cries involved). Then we took the seeds out, similar to the way you'd take the seeds out of a pomegranate, and rinsed them. At this stage, they're super tender and shiny and, apparently, a delicacy! But we decided to roast them, because that's half the fun. (medium low heat until the shells begin to harden)
You know, today turned out sunny in a lot of ways! (Fun Fact- a lot:100::a dozen:12)
Along with this sunflower time, my sister and I played a song in church called "There Is Sunshine In My Soul Today". Honestly, this hymn is generally not one of my favorites because of its slight hokey-ness. But, because of all the good feelings it gave me today, I guess any hard feelings towards the bouncy march are gone. Then after church, my sister and I watched Tangled! AND my shoulders got sunburned! AND John Denver's "Sunshine" came up on my iPod shuffle! All these experinces together made today quite sunny. Not in the scary-kill-you-slowly-gaseous way, but I guess you weren't going to guess that anyway. (Fun Fact- "anyways" is not a word)
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