On a tiny little farm in the center of the valley lived a family who had 5 lovely daughters.  Their father enjoyed planting a garden and raising animals to help provide the food they needed.  This wasn’t just an ordinary garden – this was a large, huge, gigantic garden with every imaginable kind of food.  There was the sweetest corn on the cob that you ever tasted, there were big red tomatoes and little yellow tomatoes that looked like tiny light bulbs.  There were many different kinds and colors of squash, potatoes, pumpkins, cucumbers, onions, lettuce, okra, spinach, green beans, carrots, peppers, watermelons and cantaloupes, and even awful tasting parsnips… and then…there were sunflowers.

Now sunflowers are not exactly vegetables, but they have seeds that make very tasty snacks.  With bright yellow faces they grow on a stem that makes them look something like a small tree.  They certainly made a nice border around the large, huge, gigantic garden.

Raising a garden is a lot of work.  The dirt has to be dug up, the seeds have to be planted, the plants have to be watered – and in the center of the valley, the plants had to be watered every day.  Then there are the weeds – those other plants that try to grow where you don’t want them too…and they have to be pulled up and thrown away.

So the father of the family needed lots of help from his lovely daughters to take care of the garden.  While each of the girls did their part, Kathy seemed to do especially well at watering the plants.  She would get up very early in the morning to make sure the garden had a good long drink before the day became too hot.  She got lots of freckles on her face from standing out in the morning sun, but there was a feeling of satisfaction from helping care for those plants.

The garden made the family happy – but the father was especially proud of the sunflower plants.  As the days went by, they grew taller and taller and their bright yellow faces shown brighter and brighter.  He would tell his friends that he had never had such grand sunflowers…they were taller than Kathy…taller than her father…before long they were taller than the house…they were a sight to see!

And then, a sad thing happened.  One day after Kathy gave those big plants a drink, she forgot to turn off the water…so the hose ran water on them all night long.  When the father came out in the morning, he was very surprised that he couldn’t see his tall, bright sunflowers.  What had happened to them?  Where did they go? Oh my, their roots couldn’t take all that water – and they had crashed right down to the ground. There lay those big giants with their faces in the mud.

So the father was sad and Kathy felt bad – but from then on, she remembered to turn off the water!!