Saturday, August 16, 2008

Sunflowers at the Drawbridge

I walked the length of Union Street today, from where it crosses Henry to where it ends, at Prospect Park. Some people walk the seawall around Stanley Park; I walk Union Street.

The journey to it was better than the park itself, which depressed me.

I saw the lovely garden next to the Gowanus Canal and took a lot of pictures for the Cape Horticultural Society. I will give a"talk" on New York gardens in Cape Town in the winter (their summer). This is my favourite garden. The gardener is Kirstin, and she is reclusive, as good gardeners should be. Her boyfriend had promised 8 foot sunflowers, and he wasn't kidding. Early in the summer I found him watering her sidewalk flowers and could hardly imagine, then, the yellow giants I found today.

I have never really liked sunflowers. They seemed too obvious. Too yellow and way too cheerful. There was about as much publicity and as much public adulation about them as there was about the Da Vinci code and I thought them equally horrible.

But I have been converted. As you will see.










5 comments:

  1. Ok, my only question is, aren't they supposed to all point in the same direction? Or are New York sunflowers really nonconformist? ;-)

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  2. I couldn't agree more, and I love reclusive gardeners.

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  3. New York sunflowers are..well, most of them are pointing in the same direction aren't they? They're just a bit top-heavy.

    Hi Pam - yes, mystery is good.

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  4. Kirsten's mom gave me this blog because I'm an avid gardener in New Hampshire. Really beautiful sunflowers,must be a good year for them.I have them coming up everywhere,we feed too many birds blackoil sunflower seeds!

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  5. I love these multi-branching sunflowers. They grow in ditches & line roadways around the southwestern US. Along the roads they grow waiste-high. But at my house where they get abundant water, they grow gigantic!

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