Sunflower

Wednesday

Birdie Hall

The myopia of the ‘Sunflowers’ protesters

As we stumble closer and closer towards nuclear war, environmental destruction and societal collapse, young people are feeling understandably a little hopeless. Some are shooting up schools; others are dumping hundreds of gallons of milk out onto grocery store floors to promote a “plant-based future.” Historically, when people are ideologically hopeless, they destroy art. The two disgruntled they/thems who recently threw two cans of Heinz tomato soup on Van Gogh’s "Sunflowers" thought that by defacing an oil painting depicting the sublime fruits of an unscorched earth they would draw attention to their cause: ending all oil consumption and thereby saving the planet. https://twitter.

sunflowers juststopoil protesters

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

Would my success in growing cannabis plants translate to nasturtiums?

From our UK edition

In a cave once used as a stable and now abandoned, I found a wooden crate containing a dozen tiny clay flowerpots. They were of a simple design and looked old. I found two packets of seeds in a bric-à-brac drawer — sunflowers and nasturtiums — and I sowed them in the pots, which I arranged in a row on a shelf on the terrace. It was my first attempt at growing anything since 1979, when I raised six cannabis plants in my father’s greenhouse with such spectacular success that I had to permanently leave the roof panes open to accommodate them. Rarely have sunflower and nasturtium seeds commanded such loving and indefatigable attention from the sower.