The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

Church chat

The gift of a packet of seeds . . .

9/8/2020

Back on the 14th of May the kids and I were gifted with a packet of sunflower seeds, a pot of soil, and a watering can.
To make things fair (because that’s the only way we can manage to get anything done), I counted out each seed. There were 30. So each child got to poke a hole and plant a seed 15 times. I fully expected absolutely nothing to happen (notorious plant-murderer), but just a few days later tiny little green shoots popped up out of the dirt. Surprisingly, every seed actually sprouted and we enjoyed watching which plants grew fastest and became dominant. In the end, we had just over a dozen cheerful sunflowers on our window sill.

We enjoyed sitting downstairs in the communal garden and looking up at the flowers in our window. What I didn’t realise was that a lot of our neighbours were doing the same thing. A few of us have already started making plans for planting sunflowers in multiple window boxes next spring. And maybe planting a few on the ground so we can watch the flower heads follow the sun.

So while we watched our flowers grow, we also grew closer to our neighbours. It’s probably been the best thing to come out of our time in lock-down. Extra thanks to our friend who started it all with her gift to us. Who knew a little packet of seeds would make so many of us so happy?