Planting Sunflowers: Resilience, Hope, & Gratitude

Sunflowers, a Seasonal Reflection Rooted in Change

 Choosing to live more in harmony with the natural world and its cycles has changed me in ways I never anticipated. It began with questions, imperfect plans, and an instinct to follow the moon, but these experiences have come to reshapre me entirely. I am different as a result of walking this path, down to how I grieve, hope, and begin again. I’ve written before about the need to choose participation over perfection, sometimes starting a project with little more than a vision and trusting where the journey takes you.

Back in April of this year, I faced a day I had dreaded for over a decade. I said goodbye to my best friend, a 13-year-old rough collie named Reggie. I brought Reggie home the day after my senior prom in April of 2012, and he was a central figure in my life from that moment until we said goodbye, almost exactly thirteen years later. I was 18 then, now I’m 31. He had been with me for my whole adult life.

 When I reflect on that time, I am awed by how carefully I was handled. I was blessed to be in a position to spend his last days with him, and to say goodbye in the comfort and safety of his favorite place; the back yard of our homestead.

That blessing, though, was bittersweet. The aching silence after he was carried off, so lovingly and respectfully, was a chasm in our normally bustling homestead. I cried a lot. I had a hard time knowing what to do with myself. But as is so often the case, it was in the shadow of this goodbye that I was able to recognize some of the ways living this way has changed me.

I noticed how the wisteria was blooming and the honeybees were out foraging in earnest as I sat out back with my best friend. I noticed how kind the receptionists from the vet's office were, how understanding my coworkers had been about my sudden absence, how lucky I had been to get not only thirteen amazing years with him, but the chance to say goodbye. After spending years dreading how the story would end, I found myself marveling in gratitude at the ways we had both been lovingly cared for throughout our time together.

Reggie on our last day together.

Planting through Grief

 The next morning, desperate for a distraction from the quiet house, I opened my binder of seeds. I knew the moon was in Leo and I knew I had a bounty of various sunflower seeds saved up. Since Leo said to be the sun's home, I thought it felt like a poignant and appropriate time to sow them, and a meaningful tribute I could pay to the indescribable impact that Reggie had on me during his thirteen years on earth. I have learned that burying my hands in the soil can be an effective way to deal with many of life's challenges. The Earth always seems to know what to do with everything, given enough time. As I tucked the seeds into soil, I listened to music. I remembered the many versions of Reggie's and my life together. I thought about our many moves together during my college years, how many storms we weathered, how much I learned in all those years while caring for him. I looked out at the empty yard, still littered with the occasional stray tuft of hair I had lovingly brushed from him during our last few days together, and I felt so thankful that we spent his last five years here. After all that uncertainty and change in those early years, we had found our big back yard and put down roots.

 Just as the rain on the fallen seeds makes way for the coming sprouts, I knew that my grief for the beautiful chapter of my life that had just ended would somehow make way for whatever comes next. As hard as the moment after was, it felt natural to me to move forward by plunging my hands and my hope into the dirt and simply trusting time to deliver flowers.

My sunflower garden was a reminder to myself that the darkest nights before the new moon inevitably give way to the swell of the full moon's silver light. This time in my life was certainly a dark moon period. A withdrawal. A separation from a soul tie that had seen me through some of my hardest challenges and many of the lessons that made me who I am today. My best friend taught me so much, and he was such an important part of my story. However hard it was for me to see it when my food, my bed, my home all reminded me of grief, I planted as a way to remind myself and to guarantee that there was some beauty still ahead.

 I think of the sun as the life-giver. The constant, unchanging force from which all else grows. The changing moon reflects his light back to us in cycles, but the sun burns on.

Weathering Storms

 A few weeks after I sowed the sunflowers, tragedy found us again. A neighbor's two dogs escaped their yard one night and obliterated our poultry pens. We lost 34 birds - chickens, ducks, turkeys, and quails. The carnage was hard to process, but in my raw state following such a personal loss, I did not shed a tear. My young sunflower sprouts, growing along the back of our quail aviary, took damage during the attack.

 After we cleaned up the scene and made our repairs and reinforcements, I straightened out the sunflower seedlings that could be salvaged. As I watered them in, I allowed my deep and complicated feelings to catch up to me. We had not experienced empty bird pens since our first months as homesteaders. As cliché as it sounds, the silence was deafening. Outside of the joy of their presence and company, our birds are foundational to many of the systems on our homestead. Losing them so suddenly and violently was a shock to our daily lives in many ways, and a troubling reminder not to take anything for granted.

 The next day, I loaded up three incubators with every egg we had. I remember thinking how glad I was that I had fallen behind on washing them, since it meant I had plenty of fresh ones at room temperature that would be good for incubating. I marked my calendars and waited for the sun to do its work.

Birds are amazing in many ways, but the egg as a life-giving vessel is among the most incredible things about them as far as I am concerned. Although we lost almost all of our hard work over 5 years of raising poultry, their eggs meant that we were not starting from scratch. Their last gift to us was an opportunity to begin again.

Blooming & Seeding

 As I am sharing all this, the sun has found his way to his home in Leo. Indeed, the sun has not let me down. The sunflower seeds from April have bloomed their brilliance, gracing us with over a month of their vibrant colors and the abundance of local life they bring to our garden. They grew tall and proud, towering far over the six foot roof of the aviary, and they saw the coops fill back up with life. We hatched twenty-two chickens, five turkeys, and nine quail from the eggs of my birds lost in the dog attack. The attack's only survivors, a male and female muscovy duck pair named Roosevelt & Wednesday, hatched their own five ducklings this past month. Watching all these birds grow, and seeing in them the colors and personalities of the parents I also raised, has been a welcome opportunity to reconnect with why we do all this. It is about always laying the foundation for a slightly better tomorrow. It is a vote for hope.

 Almost all of the spent sunflower heads have been pulled down by hungry squirrels and birds, leaving plenty of seeds for me to gather for the fall garden. They have already provided us with a summer's worth of bouquets to gift and display in our home. In the coming weeks and months, fates allowing, we will begin to collect eggs from those baby birds I was hatching in May. The old adage April showers bring May flowers worked out fairly literally for us this year.

Lessons from the Soil

 Homesteading is not just raw food, it is raw life. There is no hiding from the hard parts, and there is often no outsourcing what needs to be done. The lessons are won through experience and, most importantly, failure. Sometimes, even death. The reward for a life comprised of systems is a life that both sustains you and needs you. It is a built in reason to keep going. It is a community in and of itself. It is a mindset that keeps you connected to gratitude, hope, and resilience. The animals still need watering. The garden still needs tending. The homestead still needs you. I'll be honest, mine has looked a little more unkempt this year than usual. The struggle of dragging yourself to the task may not feel much like medicine but, in my experience, your hands in the dirt often does.

I'll remember Reggie as fierce and tuned in. He pushed me out of my comfort zone and helped me turn a new city full of strangers into my home, a community I have laid deep roots in. The seasons we spent together have informed so much of my life today. He was an integral part of my first experiences in creating a life for myself that was totally my own, and he taught me to be more present in it.

Each sunny day will eventually give way to storms, but every cloud must be broken up by sunlight. Life is all about learning to engage with an appreciate the cycle with trust that renewal is always ahead. Appreciating what is to be found in each moment has been life changing for me. What seeds have you planted in your own seasons of grief and transformation? What systems do you lean on when your world is shifting? I'd love to hear what engaging with hope has taught you.

Love & Light,

Lauren