Welcome

Welcome! This site is experimental - is still in the process of being put together - the links at the top aren’t set up yet - but the links in this post work.

What’s the Sunflower Club?

The basic idea of the sunflower club is to give free seeds away to anyone who’d like some, to help anyone who is interested to learn about the environment and have a bit of fun. You can take pictures, measure the sunflowers, blog if you like, or not — and then when you’ve grown your own sunflowers, you can share the seeds with others. The other general adventure is to have a family tree of sunflowers, so you can trace back the ancestors of your own sunflowers through the person who gave you seeds, all the way back to Grond, Morpheus and the other 1st Generation sunflowers featured in the original blog: http://sunflowerreport.blogspot.com

Seeds are freely available to grow monster sunflowers, and people who want to start their own generations with their own seeds are also welcome. You can do it in your backyard — and if you live in the city, there’s ways of doing urban sunflowers too.

Goal

The philosophy of the Sunflower Club is to have fun, share, and learn about the environment. Kids seem to like growing sunflowers, and some teachers are starting to join; it’s a great way to get them thinking about science.

The Varmint Wars: Vampire Rabbits, Bugs and Slugs

There’s all kinds of creatures that like to try and eat or destroy sunflowers: vampire rabbits, megalomaniacial nincompoop squirrels, voracious munching deer, rabid bugs, humongous slugs, etc. - so even if you try growing sunflowers, there’s variety of reasons why they might not make it. But the basic philosophy of the sunflower club is - my sunflowers are your sunflowers, so they’re our sunflowers. Kind of like mi casa, su casa. All it means is the sunflowers I grow are not really mine, they’re “ours”, so if you don’t grow sunflowers, or the varmints get them, you are invited to enjoy our sunflowers through the pictures and blogs, and to try again next year.

Facebook and Blogs

As of Summer 2009 most of the “action” is on the Facebook group, with some pictures, tips and whatnot. It’s feeling like it’s just easier to upload pictures in Facebook, make captions, and so on. But there’s this site too, and I am happy to create a blog here for anyone who likes. (ex: http://you.sunflowerclub.net)

Here’s a few links to some of the experimental blogs from members of the Sunflower Club:

Walter: http://walter.sunflowerclub.net/ - Walter is the Boston “regional distribution center” — har har. He ended up with a bunch of seedlings and has been giving them away. There’s a really interesting post at the beginning of his blog that talks about the impact that growing sunflowers had on him as a child, and now he’s an MIT professor.

Euro: http://euro.sunflowerclub.net - Some nice pictures from the Mediterranean.

Todd: http://todd.sunflowerclub.net/ - This is my blog from Summer 2008.

TIMELINE/FAMILY TREE

2007: 1st Generation - Grond, Morpheus, etc. - “Sunflower Report 1.0″ - http://sunflowerreport.blogspot.com

2008: 2nd Generation - 1st generation seeds were sent to some people, including Walter and the Mysterious Mediterranean, and the experimental Sunflower Club Web site was created at http://www.sunflowerclub.net

2009: 3rd Generation - More seeds were sent out, locally and elsewhere, and the Facebook Group “A Sunflower Club” was created. On April Fool’s Day, some seeds were shared with Al Gore, in an envelope along with an invitation to join the Sunflower Club. He understandably gave the envelope to an aide; whether he will grow sunflowers is unclear, but at least there is a fun picture:

GOING GLOBAL

One reason that Facebook is probably a temporary solution, and that this blog site is a temporary solution, is that the Sunflower Club is going global; at the moment members outside of the U.S. are probably people who are bilingual, who also happen to speak english; but I’d like to make the site multilingual. If you happen to be bilingual in English and any other language, or know someone who is, or like the idea of figuring out how to make the site multilingual,email me at tekelsey “at” gmail “dotcom”

HELP WANTED: SUNFLOWER GENEALOGISTS

We need to brainstorm some way to keep track of the sunflower family tree. Maybe it would be using a site like http://www.ancestry.com as a joke, or maybe there’s a programmer out there who can help us make some nifty tool. Or maybe we just write it down. There is the original family tree of Grond and Morpheus, Itchy and Scratchy, etc. (see the newspaper articles); but then there are bound to be other family lines too, as people join the club who are starting their own lines, with their own seeds.

KIDS AND SUNFLOWERS

Kids seem to enjoy growing sunflowers, especially ridiculously tall fast-growing sunflowers. There’s a lot of fun involved, including the way the sunflowers follow the sun, the buzzy bumblebees, and being able to measure how the sunflowers grow, even taking pictures. There are some teachers in the club, and it’s certainly true that it can be a nice way to help capture childrens’  (and adults’) imaginations, a way of inviting them to learning about the environment, through fun.

Here’s the director’s cut of pictures from last year’s newspaper article, including some young sunflower farmers: http://picasaweb.google.com/tekelsey/SunflowerClubPictures?feat=directlink

JOINING THE CLUB

If you are interested in joining the Sunflower Club, please feel free to visit this link to sign up for “A Sunflower Club” on Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=70753878075

If you are not on Facebook, maybe now is the time to try! Go to http://www.facebook.com, sign up for an account, and once you’re registered, try searching for “A Sunflower Club”. (If you have any questions feel free to email me: tekelsey “at” gmail “dot” com)

If you’d prefer not to sign up for Facebook, you can just sign up for the Google group, so that you’re “registered” as a member, and we’ll put some of the information there. To sign up for the Club Sunflower Google Group, visit: http://groups.google.com/group/clubsunflower — on that page - you can click the link to “apply for membership” and it may ask you to sign up for a free Google account if you don’t have one already. Or if you like, you can just email me at tekelsey “at” gmail “dotcom” and I can automatically put you on the list.

IDEAS? QUESTIONS? COMMENTS? CONUNDRUMS?

You’re welcome to email me at tekelsey “at” gmail “dotcom”