SUNFLOWER : ANCESTOR

Written 7/17/2020

🌻SUNFLOWER : ANCESTOR

​They have taught me so much in the last few months about willingness, time, desire, tracking, constitution, strength, beauty.

🌻I learned this season that sunflowers originally are wildflowers of Turtle Island. They were used for food, building, and dyes by first nation people. They left their place of origin in the 1500's, and we're revered throughout Europe nforntheir beauty, and by the 19th century, Russia and Ukraine had began to grow them commercially for seed and oil consumption.

🌻I thought that they were indigenous to Slavic lands (but I was wrong and learned anew), because in 1997 my father and I drove by miles and miles and miles of acres of them as we made our way to Florynka from Vienna. They were so incredibly beautiful-- filling the foothills of the Carpathian mountains...their radiant faces comforted me as we drove towards my grandparents' village- our ancestral homelands. My father and I were both anxious...unsure of what or who we would find, and the sunflowers reassured me.

🌻On the way back to Vienna, I snuck one into my luggage-- it stayed with me for years.... through many moves....from coast to coast....and finally I had to release it. Let it return to the Earth.

🌻When I built the beds in April and May-- soon after, sunflower sprouts began showing themselves...in most of the beds....in little clusters....they came forth- plump, sturdy, and joyful...and it felt like we both were returning to this land, having finally found our way here, and to one another.

P.S. They're approaching 7' in height. They lovingly tower over me.

📍Shared hunting grounds of many first nation folx

#sunflower #wildflowers #ancestors #plantmedicine #plantancestors #returning #ecoqueer #tallflowers #ancestralfuturism #ancestralstories #uncededland