sunflower

There are three of them, tall -- at least nine feet high -- with cheerful golden flowers, golden centers, perched in the vegetable garden. Each stalk has branches that include a flower or two. I look out at these flowers, taller than anything else in the vegetable garden and feel reassured by them.

Wild sunflowers grew in Texas, next to a railroad track, or a fence, less a sign of cheerfulness than stubborn survival amidst the long heat of summer.

I drove past a field of commercially grown sunflowers in West Texas once, it was moment to make you gasp a bit at the massing of such a simple and sculptural plant.

The yellow finches are attracted to the seeds on our sunflowers. These plants came from seed off of last year's sunflowers.