# One summer, the flower was winning > A sunflower planted in a yoghurt pot in March stands taller than the child who grew it by August, for this one summer. August 20, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/the-sunflower-they-grew One sunflower, drawn side-on in charcoal line with a warm yellow head, planted in a plain terracotta pot. Beside it, at the same scale, a small child in plain outline. The flower stands taller by about a head. Nothing else is printed. It went into a yoghurt pot in March. Nobody expected it to win. ## Why is the child drawn standing next to the flower, rather than the flower alone? Because the flower on its own is just a flower — next to him, it becomes a measurement. A sunflower with nothing beside it says nothing about size; scale needs a second, recognisable object to read against. Put a child at true relative height next to the stem and the drawing stops being a picture of a plant and starts being a record of who was ahead by August. The comparison is the entire reason both figures are on one shirt, rather than the flower by itself. ## Why does the chewed leaf stay in, instead of being drawn whole? Because a slug got to it, and taking the hole out would turn a record into an idealised sunflower that never actually grew. The stem leans slightly under the weight of its own head; a leaf has a hole clean through it. Both are what happened to this particular plant in this particular pot. A drawing that tidies the damage away is drawing a different plant — a generic one, the kind on a seed packet, not the one that came up in the garden this year. ## Does anyone need to give permission for a design like this? No — nothing here belongs to anybody else. It's an invented illustration of a family's own child and their own plant, not a reproduction of a photograph, seed-packet artwork or a trademarked variety. That's the opposite of a restriction: because it's original, there's no licence to chase and nobody to ask. That changes if the starting point is somebody else's photograph of a sunflower rather than a drawing made from life — at that point it's their composition being copied, not the family's own garden. ## Does this work if the plant grows slowly, or loses? Yes — what does the work is a real comparison, not a guaranteed win for the flower. A tomato plant that stalls at knee height beside a child who's already taller tells its own true story; a bean plant thin as a pencil against a broad-shouldered child is a comparison in the other direction and just as worth drawing. [A handprint kept at its true size](/stories/their-handprint-at-this-size) works from the same logic: the real measurement is the content, not a flattering one. ## Does this work with two children measured against the same plant? Yes — draw both children in, each at his own true height against the stem, and the comparison becomes two results on one shirt instead of one. A shared sunflower measured against children of different ages produces two different readings from the same plant: the older one might already be ahead, the younger one losing by more than his brother did at that height. That isn't a complication, it's more information for the same design to carry. ## Isn't this just a photo you could take instead? A photo records the moment; a drawn illustration decides what to keep and what to leave out, and that choice is a different kind of record. A snapshot would show the same two figures, plus the fence, the washing line and whatever the light happened to be doing that afternoon. A charcoal line strips that away and keeps exactly the comparison that matters — stem against child, head against head. It sits alongside [whatever he brought home from school that week](/stories/the-thing-they-made-at-school): kept for what it argues, not for the background it happened to have. ## Does it print well? Yes — a single ink line with one block of yellow for the head is about as clean a print as this material handles. Keep the charcoal as a hard line rather than a soft sketchy one, and the head as flat yellow rather than shaded, on a pale blue or oat tee. The bend in the stem and the hole in the leaf both read fine because they're shapes, not gradients — [flat colour with a hard edge is what survives fabric](/stories/outgrown-in-eleven-weeks), where a soft wash would go muddy. ## How do I get one made? Describe the plant at [JustOG](/) — how it was grown, roughly how tall it got, and whatever marked it as this one and not a generic flower. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped. Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop). Next August it'll be his turn to be the taller one, and the flower won't see it coming.