MrShineyhead's Travels:
Deaf Dog in the Park | State Fair | MrWildWildWest | Gone Fishin' | The Pirate | Me Here!

Tales in The Dark:
The Mountain Lion | Ice Lake | Civil War | Lorelei | The Goblins

With a special ASL translation of:
The Star-Spangled Banner

Me Here!

This story is one that is very close to my heart.  It is about a memory I had of my trip to the eastern part of Germany and a story I heard while I was there. Germany has hundreds of sunflowers. I really like the stores that they have in Germany which sell little mini-sunflowers that are about 18 inches tall. They sell them dyed in a variety of colors like blue and pink in addition to the traditional yellow color. Germany is famous for its numerous sunflowers.

You would think that Germany would have hundreds of sunflowers all the time, but it wasn’t always like that. Many years ago, there was a time when whole fields of sunflowers stood broken and wilted everywhere. Aside from a few errant survivors, the fields stood untended and the wilted sunflowers were everywhere.

The reason for this was that after the Communist Russian occupation of Germany ended, all of the money that had been allocated for the care and tending of the sunflower gardens disappeared.  This left the poor German farmers with no money or resources to keep their sunflower fields alive. Consequently, all the sunflowers died, and what follows is the story of how Germany reclaimed their fame as the country of sunflowers.

Once upon a time there was a farmer who raised sunflowers.  He surveyed his fields and began to plant his crop, dropping the seeds into the furrows until many rows of sunflowers were planted.  After a while, the seeds grew into hundreds of rows of tall, beautiful sunflower plants that swayed in the breeze. Each sunflower grew tall and strong with beautiful petals surrounding their sunny faces.

The farmer looked across the field proudly as he walked along the rows watering each flower.  The sunflowers drank in the nourishing water like it was summer rain. Eventually the little sunflowers grew to their full heights of about 18 inches tall. The farmer was very proud of his crop.

Imagine the farmer’s dismay when he was informed that the funding for the care and harvest of his sunflower crop had been cut! The farmer was devastated. The farmer had no money of his own to keep his crop going. What was he to do?

Without the water, the sunflowers began to shrivel and die. As time passed, they withered and bent, and the few sunflowers that remained alive watched their friends dry up and die.  Finally there were just a few lonely sunflowers left.

“I’m here! I’m here!” one lonely flower cried, hoping someone would hear and come and water him, “I am so thirsty!” As the hot, sunny days passed, the lonely sunflower drooped, and looked to the sky for rain. But just when he thought rain would come, the sun came out again.

The dead sunflowers slowly decayed and disintegrated into the dirt, and after a while, the lonely sunflower realized that there were tiny green shoots popping up in the field all around him.

The sunflower then noticed that two trucks drive up to the edge of the field, and the farmers in these trucks get out conferring with each other.  After a short discussion, the two looked at the field and then approached the lonely sunflower that had survived without care for so long.

“I’m here! I’m here!” the sunflower cried, and to his delight, the men carefully dug him up cradling his roots and taking him from the field.  One farmer put the sunflower in the back of his open sided pickup with the other remaining flowers, and left the field.

The sunflower enjoyed the feel of the breeze on his petals as the truck sped down the road. Soon, the truck arrived in town and the farmer retrieved the sunflowers from the back of his truck.  The farmer brought all the flowers to a street stand in town and set them up for sale.

A passerby saw one of the sunflowers and instantly fell in love with it. The sunflower was elated! Finally, someone wanted him!  The customer paid the farmer and took the sunflower.  The farmer was thrilled as several more customers approached and also bought sunflowers.  The farmer excitedly pocketed the money.

The lonely sunflower enjoyed his new life on the windowsill of his owner’s window for many days, and then finally he started to wilt. As time passed, his petals fell off and his stem grew thin and brittle, finally, as the snow fell outside the window, the sunflower went to sleep forever.

Translation done by: Tammera J. Richards, BS, CI & CT; SC:L; NAD IV