Flowers

I love flowers. I especially love sunflowers. Those and daisies are my most favorite flowers ever. I think the sunflower thing has something to do with being a Kansas girl. You know the saying, you can take the girl out of Kansas…. Well, that’s me. I was taken out of Kansas just over 10 years ago. I could probably live the rest of my life here in Illinois, and still be a Kansas girl. Well, for you local folks who probably don’t know this, Kansas is nicknames the Sunflower State and in fact, the state flower is the sunflower. I don’t think I even know the state flower for Illinois. I just asked my school aged kids and they don’t even know. Don’t they teach this in school? Well, anyway. At the beginning of Spring, we planted flowers in the patch of dirt in front of our house. We bought a bunch of already growing stuff in bloom to start it out. We also sprinkled out a bunch of seeds that came in a packet called Butterfly Garden. I didn’t really pay attention to what was in the packet when I bought it. I just wanted to attract butterflies to lay eggs so we could watch the life cycle of the caterpillar turning butterfly. That hasn’t happened. Maybe next year. But, I don’t care because I’ve got these amazing, 6 foot tall sunflower plants growing now. I inspect them every day, watching and waiting with eager anticipation for them to open. This morning, one of them finally accommodated me. It’s only about half way open, but may be even more by evening. I can’t wait to see it. What was really exciting for me (and I’m easily excited) is that it’s red!! Of course, the traditional color for sunflowers is yellow. And I do believe that some of them are yellow, from what I can see of the petals peeking through. Naturally, I had to go and take some pictures of my red sunflower. I also shot a couple of others in various stages of blooming. While I was out there, I decided to snap some quick shots of several of the other things that popped up out of this Butterfly Garden packet. Enjoy!