A monarch butterfly alights a volunteer sunflower in my yard – the puppets tell me the seagulls brought the seed in special from Edirne…do you think it is possible? (photo by Liz Cameron)

Wishing for a bit of sunflower Eden, last night, I dreamed of the long drive from Istanbul to Bozcaada through Edirne province, land of the moving yellow heads.  Yellow heads, that is, of flowers.  Specifically sunflowers in fields so vast you might fall asleep looking for the end.  But by the end, they would be looking the other way – enraptured by the sun and twisting their green, thistle-ish necks into beloved submission.

Turkish landscape: Fields of sunflowers (Photo credit: Sanne van der Beek)

In my dream, the puppets tied themselves to my clothes and hair so that they could float with abandon as I leaned as far as I could out of the window of M.’s little green MG all the way from our kebap stop in Tekirdağ to Roma-filled roads in Eceabat. With each kilometer – my stress and anxiety drained out of me like gas guzzled in an old golden Chrysler.  We flew free in the driven hard breeze, not worrying about knotting up our hair or anything else involving parts of us.

And then I woke, stumbly in later summer sleep, ignoring Tiryaki, the opium addict puppet’s urgings to remain in dreamland, and took my first tea with the little chorus of dancing lady puppets (they are the ones that always start the puppet shows, boobs and all) down in the garden.  Giggling with joy at the butterfly platoon dancing in and around the volunteer sunflower plant that had sprung from between the bricks, I caught happy, mumbling cries of “Ayçiçeği” as soft morning comfort filled the patio.  Ayçiçeği is the Turkish word for sunflower (eye-chih-cheh-eeh).

As soon as the caffeine from those impossibly tiny glasses of tea made its way up to my eyes, I decided to capture the moment.

Esma, the hippie puppet, tells me that “hope summers eternal, especially when Monarch butterflies and time-travelling seagulls are involved.”

Enjoy some of the magic we had this morning.

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• Mellow Yellow (davidsgardendiary.wordpress.com)
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