Ode To The Sunflowers

My space under the deck is filled with vases and vessels, overstuffed with cut sunflowers that I optimistically thought would survive Irene’s wind speeds, being downgraded and all to a tropical storm.

I tried reaching high and cutting the tallest flowers on that ominously still and humid day before the storm, but I found myself wandering around and around the garden, trying to figure out which stalks might have the best possibility of falling to the winds. They all looked so beautiful and so … sunny. I could not do the deed. I also chose to ignore Charlotte’s unsentimental sentiment of “just cut ’em down and enjoy them. They’ve lived long enough” – even though Charlotte owns one of New London’s most successful businesses – and a floral business at that.

A few sentinels remain – five or six lanky plants looking more like loiterers among low-lying herbs, potatoes, peppers, eggplant and a few sorry tomatoes in an otherwise large and empty garden – seemingly untouched in the sunshine following angry Irene.

Which brings me to in Pawcatuck, where Ed Adam Sr. and Ed Adam Jr. began a farm 26 years ago that, along with lots of other colorful flowers, sports rows and rows and rows of sunflowers. Theirs, as mine, took a big hit, but the Adam family – a week out from Miss Irene’s wrath – has a new crop just about ready and another on its way.

Ed Adam Jr., as part of the business’s event work that includes weddings and all kinds of dinners and receptions, recently supplied flower arrangements to the Basketball Hall of Fame Inductee Dinner at Mohegan Sun with about 500 sunflowers in attendance as centerpieces.

The farm off forested North Anguilla Road at number 360 has provided area homes and businesses with beautiful fresh cut flowers, such as zinnias, dahlias, Globe Amaranths and lots of sunflowers. Drive up and see the choices for yourself.

The family sells herbs and also watermelon, squash, artichokes and 30 varieties of tomatoes, with some of the pesticide- and chemical-free produce sold to individuals and others to area restaurants. Adam Jr. also has done plantings at Jonathan Edwards Winery in North Stonington and Saltwater Farm Vineyard and Stonington Vineyards in Stonington.   

Heading toward autumn, Adam’s Garden of Eden offers mums, geraniums, pumpkins and decorations for fall and the holidays.

As for the farm’s sunflowers, some of the pre-storm crop remains, joining the lonely few in my garden, while the honey bees still buzz like mad as they tend to their fallen comrades and the birds fly in for a seemingly never-ending feast.