Dear Friends,

We left the towering stems of last summer’s sunflowers in the garden – the ones that didn’t topple over, anyway. They’ve been an anchor feature for our backyard bird habitat. First, the exuberant flowers and seeds welcomed the common yellowthroat warblers and goldfinches in the late summer and fall, and then the decaying stalks provided cover for the chickadees, nuthatches, and downy woodpeckers as they visited our feeders throughout the winter. We’ll sow some kind of climbing plant beneath the sturdy stalks soon – ornamental peas or pole beans? –  while the new self-seeded sunflower shoots are emerging from the earth below. There are several sunflower starts waiting to be planted. I’m imagining an honor guard of sunflower sentinels keeping their kind watch over us.

The carcasses of last year’s sunflowers have the form and patina of weathered bones; their slightly lilting postures and many outstretched flower stems blur the boundary between flora and fauna, between mundane and magic. As the exuberance of summer erupts around us, sharpening the contrast between verdant life and these relics, I first thought of the dead sunflowers as memento mori, those symbols of life’s fleetingness found in certain artworks (especially 16th and 17th century Dutch vanitas paintings). But I don’t think that’s the right association. In fact, while the life of the original, singular sunflowers has faded, their utility and participation in the perpetuation of the life of the ecosystem continues: seeds to propagate successive sunflowers, seeds to feed birds, habitat to protect them, support structure for other vegetation, and perhaps other microbiotic life I can’t perceive. Here is the web of life, the ecological perspective. I wonder if the reminders of death found in memento mori point to the limitations of human perspective: atomistic, presentist thinking that separates us from the cosmic systems giving shape to the universe. We should be so lucky to benefit this world like my passed sunflowers.

These days I am happy watching things grow… plants, animals, small humans. And relationships, understanding, presentness. I began writing these letters to you in the heart of winter, in the heart of a global pandemic that (real or imagined) felt like it might never end. That is, it seemed psychologically safer to avoid anticipating its ending. In Vermont, I’ve learned that wintering is an embodied practice, a set of behaviors that build a mindset to be present – enjoy even! – in the harshness of the season (with its parenthetical stick season and mud season). This writing has been a part of my wintering practice, in both the season and the COVID pandemic, a creative sensemaking of this particular moment as I understand it. I’m emerging from the isolation of winter and the viral pandemic with sun-filled days stretching longer, with the virus possibly retreating, and with many of us vaccinated and coming together again.

My creative patterns are already evolving to match this return to the light of summer. More and more, I pick up my guitar or ukulele rather than a sketchbook or laptop. I’m trading the cerebral (for me) art of writing for the subliminal feeling of melody and song made by my hands. Or maybe I’m just too distracted by the changing world around me to focus long enough on any single thing requiring dedicated brainwork. When I noodle on a guitar I can soften my focus, step outside of time, intuit the subtleties of green things growing, like those sunflower shoots rising in the garden.

In growing solidarity,

Jeremy

ps. My eldest observed me writing about sunflowers, so he wanted to contribute a drawing. Thanks, Dash!