Today's bloom: Tithonia Rotundiflora or Mexican Sunflower which, as you might imagine, is found in Mexico and Central America and has two types; the one seen in my yard grows foliage 4-5 feet tall and there is also a shorter version called Fiesta Del Sol that grows to about 3 feet tall. If you start early and seed indoors (which means start seeds in trays with soil or a paper cup with soil), you might be able to get two complete cycles out of it before frost. There are about 10 varieties and some in yellow, though I have only seen orange. It has a leaf that is very soft to the touch, like a Lamb's Ear plant and can tolerate sun or shade. The books say "filtered" sun but it has grown in several direct sun places in my yard with no problem.
Because it is an annual, you can save the heads, dry them on paper and then crush and replant next spring, or leave them to reseed naturally; do nothing, seeds drop to the ground. I live in zone 6, so theoretically, it could be considered a perennial, but I would not count on it. How do you know what planting zone you live in? Order any plant, tree or flower catalogue off the web or off your friend's coffee table and it will have a color-coded map of the United States on the back that will tell you.
The Mexican Sunflower is one gorgeous flower that has an abundance of seeds in the head so once you buy seeds once, you will not need to again. They started blooming this week and will last through frost, which here, is about the end of October. Dead-head (remove) the spent blooms for abundant blooming.
These are such vibrant, easy to grow flowers that I hesitate to point out a fault, but kind of like a trusted friend who does something totally weird to you and surprises you that she did it, they have a hollow stem or peduncle. What is that about? You want them to stand up in a vase, continue to be awesome but the stems are not hardy, very easy to flop over, just when you need them. Take care in gathering.
You thought you were getting one thing and you get something all-together different. Well, we all go to the weird at times so we forgive and go on, we do not walk in their shoes. This can take more than a season, sometimes years to do if you are the one who feels wronged and let down. Philemon is a good record of that kind of forgiveness. They may come back around to you someday and explain, they may not. Sometimes, the best you can do is just move on by feeling sorry for them; that as a person, they took a wrong turn. Forgiveness may not always work and I am not to say if we can on everything.
Sometimes, the stem is hollow and wishing it were different is not going to make it so. There is a genus that has had a mutation and it is what it is. You can put it in your garden of life knowing that it has this shortcoming and work around it, or, not.
Conversely, there are people who bloom in our garden of life that you felt were just an acquaintence but in a difficult time, turn out to have a stalk like a sunflower that is strong, resiliant and dependable to be strong and resiliant. You just never know.
What I hope for that woman in my mirror is that I am more sunflower-like in dependablity but versatile and long-lived like the Mexican variety.
What I hope for that woman in my mirror is that I am more sunflower-like in dependablity but versatile and long-lived like the Mexican variety.
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