“ Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows. It’s what the sunflowers do.”
~ Helen Keller
~ 1880 ~ 1968
Though the sun often dipped behind the clouds on this late August afternoon, the field of sunflowers shone their beauty like little suns in the Sunflower Garden of St. Luke’s Hospital, Anderson Campus, Easton, Pennsylvania.
A bee decided to buzz in and photobomb this shot, landing on the sunflower in the foreground.
Young sunflowers move to face the sun, a movement called heliotropism. Mature sunflowers generally stop moving and remain facing East, which lets them be warmed by the rising sun.
The sunflower (or “soniashnyk”) is Ukraine’s national flower and has been grown on its central and eastern steppes since the middle of the 18th century. And today, in light of Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine, the sunflower is a symbol of “I Stand With Ukraine!”
St. Luke’s also has a Cosmos Field filled with their colorful, daisy-like blooms, as cosmos are related to sunflowers and daisies.
