Musings of a Vintage Junkie: fields

Showing posts with label fields. Show all posts

Monday, August 14, 2017

The Magnificent Sunflower

Who doesn't love the sight of a bright, big yellow Sunflower?

Or a whole field of them?

On our honeymoon tour of Italy 21 years ago, we were in the stupid bus when we passed by fields and fields of sunflowers on both sides of the road. I wanted to stop and get out to see them up close but we had a schedule to stick to :-(

I finally got my chance.

On a perfect summer evening between 6:30 and 7:00 p.m. (the best part of the day in my opinion) we arrived at Frederick's Farm in Clifton Springs, NY, a 16 minute drive from our house. I did not know it even existed until my daughter posted a picture of herself and my granddaughter there. Oh, the joys of social media!

The draw to the farm was the hayride through the field but when we realized the line was an hour and a half wait, we decided, like many others, just to walk the paths through the field and get an up close and personal look.

The view from waiting in the line was too much for us and we had to just go to the Sunflowers!

It was a great decision!

I was amazed at how every single sunflower in this huge field were all facing one way, away from the sun.

Well, except for one little one who seems to have lost his way...

I googled it and found out that during their growth, sunflowers track the sun and tilt towards it (called heliotropism). Once they bloom, they face East, which is what they were doing here.

I found out some other fun facts about Sunflowers.....

They are native to North America

Each Sunflower head is made up of 1,000's of tiny smaller flowers.

They are the state flower of Kansas...

They are the only flower with the word "flower" in their name.

They grow quite large.

The record for the tallest Sunflower is 30'1" grown in Germany in 2014.

The largest head can be up to a foot and a half.

While we were on the path the wagon was heading our way and didn't look like it was going to slow down. My husband, son and I, along with others on the path, had to jump inside the Sunflowers to get out of the way...there was that little space on either side.

I got some great pictures!