Are you singing yet? The Beatles, we'll never forget them.
I set out 'early' one morning last week to arrive at the sunflower fields by sunrise. But alas, I couldn't get my rear out of bed. We had scouted the day before so I knew just where to find some. In fact we drove a 2 hour loop and ended up finding them fairly close by.
Should I stop and get coffee? I really want some coffee.
The sun was already peeking up and it was at least a 15 minute drive. And to top it off it was blazing red! Oh my, I need to get a water reflection of that. If you knew where I lived you'd be laughing right now. Fortunately we just had 3-4" of rain a few days ago and the 'corner' low spot was full like a lake AND on my way.
Like I said the sun was redder than red. Now why the camera couldn't capture that I do not know.
Note to self, check into this.
There is a sign at this corner that says 'Preleasing Commercial Sites' What a laugh. I never can get into position to photograph it while there is water. Very busy corner.
Now what about that coffee?
The convenience store at the edge of town was more than packed with the local farmers and subcontractors. I kept driving. I was late enough.
The glory of the sunflower captivates my heart every year.
They were just beautiful in the light.
I found these bugs on a few of them. I believe they are boll weevils. Most of what's grown here is cotton. But with the lack of spring rain and the late freezes that we had, there were a lot more fields of sunflowers planted. And sorghum.
That morning they had all bowed their heads in an offering of pollen.
I found it interesting how most of them 'held out their hands' to receive it.
It was a lovely morning.
Then I got coffee.
1. Van Gogh actually painted quite a few sunflower paintings, the majority were created in Arles, France during 1888-1889.
2. Sunflower heads consist of many individual florets that eventually turn into seeds.
3. A model for the pattern of florets in the head of a sunflower was proposed by H. Vogel in 1979.[12] This is expressed in polar coordinates
where θ is the angle, r is the radius or distance from the center, and n is the index number of the floret and c is a constant scaling factor. It is a form of Fermat's spiral. The angle 137.5° is related to the golden ratio (55/144 of a circular angle, where 55 and 144 are Fibonacci numbers) and gives a close packing of florets. This model has been used to produce computer graphics representations of sunflowers. which mature into seeds, often in the hundreds. I'm sure you want to know this, but it
is fascinating.
4. Sunflowers in the bud stage exhibit heliotropism. At sunrise, the faces of most sunflowers are turned towards the east. Over the course of the day, they move to track the sun from east to west, while at night they return to an eastward orientation. This motion is performed by motor cells in the pulvinus, a flexible segment of the stem just below the bud. As the bud stage ends, the stem stiffens and the blooming stage is reached.
Sunflowers in the blooming stage are not heliotropic anymore. The stem has frozen, typically in an eastward orientation. (Ok, this explains why they were still facing east when I went back in the evening.)
5. Because of our unusually wet August, we have lots of wild sunflowers for the doves this year. And lots of other weeds too. (a-chooooo)
This wouldn't be complete without throwing in a shot from my iPhone edited on the iPad with HDR FX Pro and Rhonna Designs.
