Looking Skyward
Sunflower Intuitively Facing the Sun (11 Days)

If you can't plant your own flowers, consider flower delivery to your home!

Being Part of the FLOWering of Creative Intention

My Sunflower Children

By Chris Dunmire

Thoughts of yesterday's Mother's Day holiday made me reflect on the idea that having biological children isn't the only way one can take on the role of a nurturing mother.

In fact, months ago when I was halfway through Wayne Dyer's book, The Power of Intention I decided THIS was going to be the year that I would cultivate a hands-on appreciation for gardening and become a co-creator with the divine mother herself, Mother Nature.

If you're not familiar with Dyer's book, here's a short description from the publisher, Hay House:

The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-create Your World Your Way by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer explores intention as an all-pervading force in the universe that allows the act of creation to take place. Intention, he explains, is not something you do, but an energy you’re a part of. Not only do you originate from the field of intention, but if you align yourself to it, your desires become fulfilled and you find yourself at peace. Dr. Dyer shares how to reconnect yourself to your original source energy.

I was so moved by Dyer's descriptive handling of the subject of “source energy” and creation and how beautifully the energy flows with innate intention to perpetuate itself from tiny seeds into grand blossoming things that I wanted to be part of the experience — of nature's own miraculous creative process. Yes, creative intention is EVERYWHERE life exists. Witnessing it first-hand with gratitude and appreciation was my next quest.

To fulfill this new experience, I decided to plant a row of sunflowers along my corner patio fence and cultivate a small vegetable garden in the blank canvas that is my back yard this summer. My Dad gave me a small bag of seeds cultivated from his own sunflower plants last year when I visited him in Arizona, and I was thrilled at the prospect of growing my own (or as a gardening Virginia Woolf might say “A Bloom of One's Own”). The seedlings have already been started in earth-friendly Jiffy Pots® while the “growing patches” of top soil are being prepared.*

Meanwhile, in the Jiffy Pots, the FLOWering of creative intention has already begun. Nine days after sowing the sunflower seeds, one emerged as a green bud (See “Plant Nursery” picture below).

Plant Nursery
Sunflower Seedlings (11 Days)

I still remember the exact moment when I spotted the new bud. Early Friday morning I looked at the plant nursery sitting in the sunshine on my kitchen floor and saw a green leaf smiling back at me. “Look!” I pointed excitedly to my husband. “They're growing!” A moment of mother's pride overcame me. The first sunflower emerged from its dark soil womb.

The pictures on this page show the sunflower seedlings at 11 days old, and only one is a bloomer so far, with a close-up below (see “Emerging”).

Emerging
First Sunflower Budding (11 Days)

Hopefully the others will start pushing their way up through the soil and into being. See how exciting this is? This is what it means to “take time to grow the flowers.”

I'll try to capture more of the growth progress with my sunflower children over the next weeks and months. Hey, I've never done a baby book before, so these sunflower children will be my first. And sow far, being part of the FLOWering of creative intention is pretty cool. •

Next: See the Sunflowers at 57 Days »

* As gardening is a new adventure for me, my first lesson in this project was that in order to “grow stuff,” one must first dig out a good clearance of the “ungrowable” hard ground clay and replace it with nutrient-rich top soil. This is not an easy task.

© 2007 Chris Dunmire. All rights reserved.