Friday, March 03, 2006

A sunflower grows in Civic

(With apologies to Betty Smith)

Walking back to work at lunch yesterday after posting my Vintage Vixen Swap parcel to Chrissie I passed the building site where the new extension to The Canberra Centre is going in and did a double take and a shuffle back as I passed this:

What a battler! I wonder how it got to be there (any answers starting with "well, a seed was planted" will be ignored) and how it managed to last so long. Has anyone else noticed it? Will it survive long enough to flower? And, most importantly, will I look like some saddo if I sneak past and give it a water occasionally?

The sunflower brought back memories of when we lived in Christchurch as a kid and September was always sunflower planting time. Once the plants had grown and flowered we'd chose the flowerhead from the tallest plant with the biggest flower and set it aside to let the seeds dry to be planted the following year.

It also reminded me of a photo that was taken when I worked at a newspaper in the early 90s:

For some mad reason I'd decided a sunflower growing competition was in order (maybe after I'd heard rumours that the previous Librarian had a cherry tomato plant in the corner she used to harvest for lunch). The really tall plant is mine and is held up by a tower of taped together suspension file hangers.

Strangely enough I won the contest, possibly because I was the only one truly dedicated to the wellbeing of my plant. Or maybe it was because I was The Boss and my staff felt they should let me win...

1 comment :

Anonymous said...

...wear a "Greenpeace" shirt when you go water it, and no one will look twice at you....
(cool pics!)
LB