Sunflowers and Wildflowers: There's No Place Like Home

 

Firekeeper Golf Course, September 23, 2026

 

"She's a sunflower from the Sunflower State." 

I am indeed.

 

If you were an elementary schoolchild in Kansas back in the 1960s, you likely learned that song by Mack David. It's one of those songs that's imprinted in my brain. Of course, I sometimes can't remember why I walked in a room, but I remember song lyrics from 50+ years ago. (Go figure):

I was born in Kansas, I was bred in Kansas
And when I get married, I'll be wed in Kansas.
There's a true blue gal who promised she would wait,
She's a sunflower from the sunflower state.

Chorus:
She's a sunflower, she's my sunflower, and I know we'll never part.
She's a sunflower, she's my one flower, she's the flower of my heart.

There are more verses, but they weren't absorbed in my memory bank like the first verse and chorus. My mom had a copy of the "Sunflower" sheet music. Her maiden name is carefully penned on the upper righthand corner. The music has a MCMXLVIII copyright. (To save you the trouble of Googling the Roman numeral translation, it's 1948. You're welcome!)

I framed the music and use it - along with several other sunflower keepsakes - to decorate my mantel during August and September ... and this year, into October because I haven't had time to change it. (True confessions.)

I'm not the only sunflower aficionado in the state. As I wrote about in another post, Poet Laureate of Kansas Traci Brimhall has been sharing her love for poetry and the state through collecting poems from Kansas students. The 2026 Kansas State Fair was the third fair that featured poetry on placards across the fairgrounds. 

Firekeeper Golf Course, September 23, 2026

More than one extolled sunflowers:

Kansas Sunflower

by Giovanni Santana

A sunflower stands proud and tall,

Watching summer greet us all.

Facing sunshine every day,

Growing stronger all the way.

Bright as hope and gold as wheat,

Standing where the sky and prairie meet.

When I think of home, it’s easy to see

Kansas blooms inside of me.

As we have traveled to tennis matches across the Flint Hills during September and into the month of October, we've been treated to "bouquets" of Maximilian sunflowers bordering the interstate. It's been like a colorful border on nature's quilt of browning grasslands as summer transitions to fall and then toward winter.  

In our immediate area, they seem a little less plentiful as ditches have narrowed or been mowed. 

Kim's County Line - 2023

 They used to spill over on our country roads. 

File photo from 2016

Sunflower (Another State Fair Poem)

By Pa’a Meyer-Yu

Sunflowers are everywhere

Sunflower seeds, sunflower patches,

Sunflower oil, sunflower butter

Sunflowers are Kansas

Yellow petals, slender stem, brown center

Always follows the sun

Always with Kansas

Sunflowers are Kansas

 

 Sunflower (State Fair Poem)

By Isla Parker

The sunflower finds the light

Captures every ray

Its golden yellow petals gleam

Wakes in the East to grow strong and tall

Turning through the day

Majestic rapid growth

Silent sentry observing the sun rise and fall

Absorbing the nutrients of the shimmering sun

Giant brown face makes the yellow shine

Bees hum amongst

Sea of golden soldiers marches

Across the open field

Harvest of seeds to nourish the birds

Creeping out dry, raw dirt

Roots spread deep and strong

 

A late September visit to the Firekeeper Golf Course near Mayetta offered another glimpse of Maximillian sunflowers.

   The golf course features 10 acres of dedicated wildflower and pollinator gardens. 

  

Our fall visit was the perfect time to witness how this program aims to preserve the natural character of the native Kansas prairie landscape, promote local biodiversity and provide crucial habitats for wildlife and native insects. 

Goldenrod - Fire Keeper Golf Course

It included sunflowers, but also some other native Kansas plants.   

We had an animal visitor, too. It didn't seem a bit fazed by the human interlopers. 

We'll be back on those Kansas highways later this week for the KSHSAA 6A state tennis finals in Wichita. 

  

Kinley and her partner, Annie, got second place in doubles in the regional tournament last week, losing only to their senior teammates from Washburn Rural. 

Photo from the KSHSAA Facebook page

The whole team qualified to compete in the state tournament. Good luck to Kinley and her fellow Washburn Rural Lady Blues tennis team! It's been a fun freshman season for Kinley ... and her grandparents!

 

Van Gogh Colors in Kansas

 

A quote by Danish-French Impressionist painter Camille Passarro stopped me in my tracks during our day at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. Or maybe it was the pinks, purples and blues of the sky, hidden behind stark, leafless trees in a wall-size painting. 

I didn't know anything about Pissarro before our visit. But the quote inspired me to do a little research. The quote ties in with another of his reflections: "Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing."

It went on to say these quotes "reflect his artistic philosophy that true beauty does not depend on grand or inherently majestic subjects, but rather on the artist's unique vision and ability to perceive and convey the character of everyday scenes."

Now I can relate to that! 

So can some Kansas poets. When we visited the Kansas State Fair this year, I saw several placards that featured poetry with the theme, "There Is No Place Like Home." Later, I learned that the state fair poetry was part of a project spearheaded by current Kansas Poet Laureate Traci Brimhall. She partnered with Kansas 4-H groups to collect poems from Kansas students. This was the third year for the project, but it was the first time I saw them on our trek throughout the fairgrounds. (You can see all the poems at the poet laureate's website by clicking HERE. I love several of them!)

Sunrise, September 29, 2026

One of those poems was:

Van Gogh Colors in Kansas 

by Janice Northerns 

Thick slabs of gold hold up the cobalt sky 

in a vacant landscape. It’s the loneliness

of the prairie, the solitude of flyover country.

You, urban girl, sneer you’d never live here:

Kansas is no place like home to you.

Yet somehow each visit finds you drawn

to another quirky store or a house

you long to own. This place, patient

with secrets, waits for your gaze to linger

long enough to find the sunflowers, acres

of welcome ready to catch you as the blue-black

night, steeped deep in stars, calls you

to a memory you didn’t know you missed.

Isn't it amazing how life intersects in these random messages?

"Everyday scenes" are part and parcel of life here on The County Line, smack dab in the middle of "flyover country." 

Sunrise looking west, August 27, 2026

But why would I want to escape these "everyday scenes" that are so extraordinary, here "on the loneliness of the prairie," as the poet says. 

Sunrise, September 29, 2026

They are nature's Impressionist paintings, served up as a rich banquet before I even can finish a cup of coffee. 

Sunset, August 26, 2026

When I'm in the prairie ... when the wind blows a soft kind of sound almost like music, I think I hear big orchestras with lots and lots of people playin' all kinds of horns and violins, drums and things and it goes on and one for a long time - comin' and goin' with the wind ...

Gordon Parks
Kansas Poet and Novelist

Sunrise, August 27, 2026

Even though we love our "little house on the prairie," we also enjoyed getting away and touring the museum. 

We found the Monet Water Lilies I was looking for ... with a little help from a docent. I'd seen it on another trip to the Nelson-Atkins, but it had a new home this time. 

Water Lilies was created between 1915 and 1926. On the museum placard, it said Monet transformed his pond in Giverny, France, into a vast, living subject. 

"Its fluid rhythms and botanical abstraction reflect shared ideals between Impressionism and the "New Art" movement. Both hold reverence for nature and blur boundaries between environment and art."

The interpretation of the painting tied right into the nature, environment and art theme from Pissarro - just another subliminal message tying life together. 

Afterwards, we visited Andre's, a Swiss chocolate shop nearby, where we both had coffee and Randy had a rum ball. The place mat and much of the packaging had yet another art form: Scherenschmitte, a traditional Swiss paper-cutting art. 

Then, we got to spend time with Brent and Susan over the weekend ... and with grand dog, Clover. If only our 'Cats could have pulled off a win vs. Cincinnati on that football Saturday. 

 

Orange & Black Flying Machines: The Monarchs

 

For the past week or so, the shelter belts at The County Line have been the fall equivalent of miniature runways as orange and black flying machines seemed to practice touchdowns and takeoffs like student pilots practicing their craft. 

You have to look closely. They are camouflaged in the leaves and branches.

  

Monarch butterflies used the protection of our trees to shelter during their migration journey. But they flit in and out of the leaves as people amble by. They move so quickly that it's hard to capture their swoops and dives.

 

Randy's attempt yielded a pretty photo of clouds and silo. 

I didn't even do that well.  I had to dig through some old blog posts to find a mediocre flight photo to post of our fall visitors. Today, it seems most of the butterflies have departed. 

Monarch butterflies are truly miraculous.

If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies.

- Author Unknown

That's quite a reminder for this change-challenged person. They are the ultimate symbol of transformation. As George Carlin once quipped, "The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity."

I'm not sure that's true of monarch butterflies. It sounds like a lot of work to me to travel for two months, across thousands of miles, bucking wind and rain and predators. And it's all to get to a destination they've never visited before. 

The butterflies will only make this journey one time. So how do they know where to go? It is just another miracle of God's creation. Researchers say that it appears to be a combination of directional aids such as the magnetic pull of the earth, the position of the sun and the availability of milkweed, where the butterflies lay their eggs. No matter the reason, they are a beautiful signal of fall. 

File photo from Kim's County Line

They begin the journey in their summer home in Canada and the northern regions of the U.S. They are headed for a mountain range 70 miles west of Mexico City in central Mexico, where they find the perfect habitat to survive November through March in the Oyamel forests. 

File photo from Kim's County Line - Taken at Quivira National Wildlife Refuge

60 Minutes had a segment last year from Anderson Cooper about witnessing the Monarchs in Mexico. Click HERE to check it out, if you'd like.