So I was bitching and moaning tonight about being bored and my roommate Emily came up with the perfect solution. She told me about the "Sunflower Revolution" a website that tracks "Sunflower Activists" or people who run around in the dead of night, wearing black, planting sunflower seeds in abandoned lots, in those spaces in the sidewalk where trees grow, in alleys, on highway dividers...
When I was hitchhiking around the country with my friend Cloud, he told me about the same thing; only he and some other hitchhikers where criss-crossing the country planting all sorts of seeds...everything from vegatibles to flowers to trees...a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, if you will. He said he always traveled with at least one packet of some seed in his backpack, and whenever he was standing someplace that looked like it needed something green; he throw some seeds around and hope that they would grow. We stopped to plant some chestnuts we'd found after he told this story...
Another time, driving to Rochester NY I spotted a sunflower growing on an onramp in that wierd mix of crusty dirt/gravel you see on onramps...I have no idea how the poor thing was living in that filth...but it was...and it totally put the biggest smile on my face and made the rest of my day so much nicer...and I still remember it, nearly two years later!!!!
So sunflowers (plants in general,) have a huge impact on people's lives...so I decided Emily was right...I was gonna spread the sunflower love! Luckily I had two big packets of sunflower seeds just waiting for planting...so I stuffed them into my pocket and ran down Alberta Street, heading to a specific vacant lot I know that needs some flowers..
Personally, I don't know why they don't put tents or tepees up for the homeless in vacant lots in cities (seems like a big waste of space, doesn't it,) but since they don't, lets fill um up with the next best thing...flowers and maybe veggies and trees!!!!!
Love ya (wink,)
Carrot
ps If you are in Portland Oregon and see sunflowers growning on Alberta Street, think kindly of your local Sunflower Revolutionary!
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Small and direct. Recycling by dumpster diving is the same personal, efficient level of action. No wastefull coercive government 'help' Thank You.
About the sunflowers; get the all black sunflower seeds that you find in bird feed. The black and white seeds that are sold to grow in your garden are 'giant sunflowers' that get 6 to 12 feet tall. The black bird feed version is just as pretty, but much more hardy, it only grows about 1 to 3 feet tall. The seeds are much cheaper and they grow more places. I've had a stand of those small sunflowers under my bird feeder every summer for years.
A Fact is Always Better Than an Ideal.
I didn't know that! The smaller stalks would look less messy when the flower fades in the fall. I'll definitely do that. Will they grow in Minnesota?
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/ediblewoman
This is a great idea, I will be recruited as a sunflower activist.
Graffiti is still my passion however :X.
+mspin
wow..this is tight...that's such a good idea.
I havent done this yet, but will soon...i want to get some stickers printed with a really shocking fact on them and stick them everywhere (bathroom stalls...etc.) to shock people and make them think.
I'm going to go buy myself some seeds! Although, living in Wisconsin, things are pretty green already! ; )
I know just the lot! What a great idea!
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/ediblewoman
This is a fantastic, fantastic idea. Seriously, cannot express how fantastic it is. I instantly went and googled it... and found a cycling event and something about yoga. Nothing about anarchists (because you know, this is completely an anarchist activity) running around all in black secretly planting sunflowers. I'm thinking also of graffiti - imagine huge street murals of sunflower fields springing up overnight, people tagging ugly buildings with little sunflowers...
...so yeah, where's the link to that site? Because if it doesn't exist, I'm going to start it right now, seriously. O.o
I have never heard of that and that is a great idea. it is the smallest thing yet it can make such a big improvement in the world. If people thought of great ideas like this everyday we would have a lot of things solved by now and I don't think this world would be so bad.
Something people should know about:
http://www.progressiveu.org/032913-lupus-uncureable-wait-what
http://www.sunflowerrevolution.org/
There it is; hope all of you who said it was a great idea follow through and plant those sunflowers!
Viva La Sunflower Revolution!
Love ya,
Carrot
you may have just provided my school's environmental club with a new project.
"when you hold a pen, you are at war" Attributed to Voltaire