The first year I planted the Ben Garden in 2017, I found some volunteer sunflowers emerge amid the planted blooms. I had used the stump as a bird feeder in the previous years before and some stray seeds found themselves in fertile ground and produced some amazing flowers. ( You can see pictures of those sunny blossoms in the video I shared in the post on the Ben Garden.)
Last year, our neighbour Keith, passed away from lung cancer. His family had been living beside us for eight years, and I enjoyed our back yard connections, as our gardens shared space under the same sunny section of our block. Only a chain link fence separated our yards, so we would often have chats over the fence when we were both seeding or weeding.
Keith had an array of Sunflowers planted outside of his fence on the west side of his back yard. They were often a joyful addition to back alley walks as we took in the smiling yellow faces.
This year has been a painful one for me. I miss my gardener neighbour. His back yard food collection has been replaced by a grove of Canada Thistles. I don't blame the family. Maybe it was his thing and they just spend time with him when he was there. Without the gardener, maybe the garden is too painful for them to spend time in. I don't really know the whole story. I only see the weeds and the lack of smiling sunflowers.
I decided as a memory for Keith, I would plant my own sunflowers. I had that in mind last year already. I had ideas, but I ended up planting in the Ben Garden. It seemed fitting that I would memorialize Keith in my memory garden. I am sure Ben wouldn't mind. The odd thing happened. I found a stray sunflower growing in my beet patch. I let it get a little bigger and then transplanted it to the Ben Garden. That is the bloom in the above picture that just opened up this week. The other sunflowers I seeded are coming up, but at a slower rate. I have also noticed a few volunteer sunflowers coming up around the other crabapple tree and in the garden. So I let them go. I don't know if they will reach to fruition by the end of summer, but it seems a fitting tribute for my neighbour.
Keith was not just my neighbour, but so many people's "neighbour", as he was the local Baptist pastor. I never went to his church, but never felt judged for that. It seemed okay that we had our community time over the fence as we talked about plants, vegetables and life. When he told us that he had cancer, I wrote him a tribute poem called "The Backyard Pastor".
Even through Keith hasn't been around for the continuation of my journey out of what was to what is, I think he would be one of the many who still liked me for who I was, not what I professed or how I processed an understanding of life. Every time I see a sunflower, I remember my neighbour. His sunny disposition carries on in those beautiful yellow blossoms.
“When the heart grieves over what it has lost, the spirit rejoices over what it has left.” — Sufi
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