You Are My Sunshine ...

“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine

You make me happy when skies are gray

You’ll never know dear, how much I love you

Please don’t take my sunshine away …”

       ~ “You Are My Sunshine”

           ~ 1940

 ~American standard of old-time & country music & one of the official state songs of Louisiana

     ~ Its original writer is disputed. According to the performance rights organization BMI, by the year 2000 the song had been recorded by over 350 artists & translated into 30 languages. Its best-known covers include a recording by Johnny Cash in 1989

 

The beauty of these sunflowers is as bright as the sun on a late May afternoon in Allentown, Pennsylvania.       

 

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 18^th century. And today, in light of Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine, the sunflower is a symbol of “I Stand With Ukraine!”