It just so happens that I had seventeen beautiful sunflowers waiting for me when I got home this morning. 

 It wasn't the first time my guy has given me sunflowers and I hope it won't be the last.  We are celebrating our seventeenth anniversary, but he's been giving them to me for longer. I once got sunflowers from him while he was away in Africa. I remember summers in High School and when we were first married.  He would pull off the highway, jump out of the truck and grab a handful of giant sunflowers from the side of the highway (or someone's pasture).

They always brightened my day, even if the ants had decided to come along too.

I have always found it delightful that sunflowers, as well as other flower types follow the sun.  This is called heliotropism in case anybody wants to know.  Some heliotropic flowers are known to be fourteen degrees warmer than the air around them.  This warmth of course attracts insects which generate no heat on their own. -Never thought about it before, but I read that if you see a bee in the morning it will appear to be slothful as it has a dependence on heat from another source. Naturally bees and other insects find their way to an inviting stay in the warmth of the sunflower.

My point?   What smart flowers.  They spend their days bowing then reaching to the heavens taking in the sun.  Their warmth is attractive to those with none. The sun is so central to who they are, they even look and move like the sun.

Bring me the plant that points to those bright Lucidites swirling up from the earth.  And life itself exhaling that central breath!

Bring me the sunflower crazed with the love of light!

-Eugenio Montale

Crazed with the love of light.....If I could be any flower I think I'd want to be a sunflower.