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A Monument to Life.

Marc Barham
6 min readMay 19, 2021

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Three Men Walking II (1948/9) by Alberto Giacometti

‘‘Every monument of civilisation is a monument of barbarism.’’

— Walter Benjamin

I have never been green-fingered, but, this year, partly because of the Covid-19 lockdown in England, we decided — my adult son and I — to grow Sunflowers. I have bought plants before but they have always been pretty much fully grown and ready to just place where ever the mood took me and the glaring space existed, in the room. But this time it was the real deal, seeds. Bought compost and filled up two large ceramic pots and read the instructions from the packet or rather, briefly scanned the 3 images. Ready, steady, go. Into the pots I dropped the seeds and then covered them with a little more compost and a drink of water to unlock the not so secret process. Nothing to it. Life.

They have now been growing for about six weeks and I have watered them daily and changed each pot’s position to correct a certain wonkiness in the growth — they head towards the Sun for obvious reasons — and as I have never seen wonky — leaning Tower of Pisa — Sunflowers I have broken the Prime Directive and engineered their (almost) perfect straightness towards the sky.

My Sunflowers 2021 (photo by JB)

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Marc Barham
Marc Barham

Written by Marc Barham

Column @ timetravelnexus.com on iconic books, TV shows/films: Time Travel Peregrinations. Reviewed all episodes of ‘Dark’ @ site. https://linktr.ee/marcbarham64

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