Sierra V. Fedorko

Planting sunflower seeds every year usually ends up being quite a treat and watching it unfold often ends up being a beautiful thing to behold!

Last year Ben and I planted on Mother’s Day by moonlight. This year we did it later than ever and in shifts. Ben prepped the bed and I came a little later to plant the seeds and Sylvia came behind me with a shovel digging at the soil.

We never take our garden too seriously as you can tell by the downed weeds still in the sunflower bed, but it’s fun to see what kind of chaos accompanies the sunflower planting each year.

Sometimes it’s little kids drinking from the drip lines and throwing their seeds in, other times it’s planting by moonlight, and sometimes—like this year—it’s being followed by a cheery 1-year-old who’s turning up your work.😆

And it’s also four sunflower stalks already well on their way to blooming as they burst from the dry ground wild and on their own in the bed before we even got to officially planting the seeds at all.

So you see sunflowers always grow no matter the chaos or the imperfections…❤️

It’s almost like not a whole lot of the planting process is dependent on us.

And I love that. It means I can hold all those tiny seeds in my palm and not be intimidated.

Seeds are not fragile by nature, they are made and meant to grow. They don’t need us very much at all. We can absolutely nurture the environment and aid richer outcomes, but I also think we can experience great wealth by giving up our constraints, forgoing intricate garden plans, and just putting the seeds in the ground already.

I am always going to encourage you to throw seeds at the wind and see what happens.

Something glorious always does!

P.s. – I introduced our next novelette in the Green Fables series on Substack this week! You can get behind-the-scene details here, but find the synopsis below.

Under the Wilderness Moon

Essie knew she was made to be a gardener soon after she planted her very first seed from the Light-Maker. But when that seed turns into golden days and then her greatest loss, distrust of the Light-Maker takes root.

Essie thinks her heart has been healed until the Light-Maker gives her another seed with the instructions to bury that seed in the wilderness. The seed is indiscernible but reminiscent of her greatest loss and Essie flees the wilderness out of defiance and fear. But the Light-Maker is not in the business of graves. What if she turned around? What if she ran back toward the light that pools at the edge of the creek? What if she knelt in the wilderness and planted the seed in the darkness she didn’t understand?

Perhaps true healing is in store for Essie decades after the grave and buried like new in the wilderness.

I can’t tell you how excited I am for this installment of the series! Plus, Maryn from my 2019 novelette Where Maryn Goes makes an appearance in Under the Wilderness Moon and it’s so very special. You can download your copy of Maryn’s story for free which will make the reading experience for this next novelette even richer!