Monday Flowers

As usual, here are Monday flowers, found over the Father's Day weekend. My younger son and I discovered this hibiscus and sunflower during a brief walk yesterday. I'm especially fond of sunflowers for both their beauty and the memories they induce. They're likely the first thing I ever tried to grow . . . What school child hasn't tried to grow a sunflower that was started in a paper cup with a measure of dirt and way too much water? They're also pretty sturdy as cut flowers and brighten any room in which they're displayed. Of course, I prefer them uncut, anchoring the back of a vegetable garden (which is how my grandmother grew them, along with gourds and cucumbers, on the Eastern Shore) or rising up along quiet back roads in the Virginia Tidewater where I grew up. Now there are so many hybridized varieties of sunflowers that one can find everything from miniatures to the more traditional giants, and bright yellow to variegated types with stripes of yellow, orange and red. One day I'd like to see the vast fields of sunflowers in a place like Spain, where they sometimes grow as far as one can see . . . for example, along the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela.