New Paltz Nation - sunflowerblog

If you were in the village at all last summer and looked around you, you might have noticed sunflowers growing in spaces between walls and parking lots, towering out of wooden barrels, and livening up lawns and parks. Then again maybe you didn’t notice them. Some of them were 10 feet tall and had heads the size of dinner plates but some people just don’t pay attention or stay around in New Paltz for the “dog days.” Others paid too much attention and vandalized the sunflowers, stealing their heads and whacking each other with the stems. The stories of the lives and deaths of the sunflowers will be told with a power point presentation at Murphy’s Pub on Main Street Friday June 30^th at 5:30pm. Awards will be given to the businesses and agencies that participated, and there will be a happy hour with free sunflower seed cookies. I believe that a baseball game will follow (the Mets and the Red Sox for those of you who have heard of them and like to watch baseball).

The project began for me in New Paltz last year when I was trolling around on the internet. I can’t remember what I was looking for, but I stumbled across the Sunflower Project http://www.sunflowerproject.com/ . The idea is to plant sunflowers in public spaces as a symbol of peace and nuclear disarmament, not to mention the fact that sunflowers are a big, beautiful, joyous burst of love from the earth back to the sun. They are heliotropic, they turn to the sun and follow it across the sky, reflecting back a fiery yellow globe, until, laden with food for the creatures of the earth, they hang their heavy heads over and die. The more I thought about sunflowers, the more I loved the idea. I went to the store and bought a small packet of seeds. Later that week I ran into a friend of mine and told him what I was doing and he got very excited and bought me two bags of organic mammoth sunflower seeds with about 7,000 seeds in them each. Over the course of the summer I enlisted a variety of volunteers, and managed to get the seeds planted with and without permission, and with a variety of results around the town and village of New Paltz. Some of the flowers were slaughtered as babies by weed-whakers, some were still blooming in mid November. In all I was only picked up by a state trooper once. He didn’t really seem to want to hear about what I was doing; he just wanted to get me off the thruway. I learned a lot from last year’s project and I want to share it in hopes that there are others who also love the flowers and want to plant them or at least watch them grow.

This year I know where they have the greatest chance of surviving. I know better than to try planting them in the “groovy blueberry” field which was anything but “groovy” with the weedwhacker in spite of my repeated entreaties, and I know better than to plant them in front of Starbucks where they were yanked in favor of their boring little boxwoods. I know that they will thrive by Murphy’s Pub and gaze at the parking lot from either side of the second story air conditioner. Watch for them outside Old Flames on front Street and the library, 222 Main, and the Millrock building across the street.

Sunflowers have been around for 8,000 years and were just domesticated 1,000 years ago. They are the only flower domesticated in America. There are over 2,000 varieties of Sunflowers identified to date, but the largest, strongest, and most striking Sunflowers are the variety we plant which were developed in Russia called the "Mammoth Russians" which grow 6 to 12 feet tall. They are also known as "Russian Giants," "Tall Russians," "Russian Greystripes," or simply "Mammoths" These sunflowers are known, not only for their height, but for their large seed heads. The largest sunflower head, grown in Canada, measured 32 - 1/2 inches in diameter, and the tallest sunflower in the world was grown in the Netherlands at 25 feet tall.

The sunflower has become a symbol of peace and nuclear disarmament because on June 4, 1996, the defense ministers of the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine gathered at the Pervomaisk missile base after the destruction of an ICBM missile silo to celebrate the dismantling of the warhead in accordance with provisions of the START I disarmament treaty. The defense ministers planted sunflowers where missiles once were buried. U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry stated, "Sunflowers instead of missiles in the soil would ensure peace for future generations."

The Sunflower Project is dedicated to taking the 1996 Ukrainian missile gesture and fostering a worldwide campaign to encourage people everywhere to plant Sunflowers throughout their cities, towns, communities, and country sides as living symbols of peace and to celebrate our connection to nature.
The Sunflower Project vision is to see all people in every corner of the globe who are concerned about nuclear war, pollution, violence, injustice, and/or threats to the balance of nature, to plant at least one sunflower seed in a sunny place where it will be noticed.

Additional interesting items to note about the sunflower:
Sunflowers are among the top nuts to contain the highest levels of phytosterols, a compound that reduces cholesterol levels and improves heart health, according to a study. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1324066.cms
Sunflower oil has been researched as a potential diesel fuel substitute, since sunflower oil has an energy content equivalent to 93 percent of no. 2 U.S. diesel fuel.
Sunflowers are the legal crop that gives you the most bang for your buck. Imagine that, a little striped seed only half an inch long, so gradually, inexorably,( unless it is stomped or whacked) becomes a towering symbol of hope and feeder of squirrels.

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