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!

 

Teed Off

 

I am perfectly happy when Randy is "teed off." I am not a golfer, but I do like golf courses. When we're on vacation and the weather is right, we usually include one or two stops at golf courses. Who can argue with pretty scenery and a quiet place to read a book?

We didn't make it out of Kansas on our October 13-20 trip to Colorado before stopping at the first golf course. (Yes, I am late posting this.)

 

 Randy has always wanted to golf at Buffalo Dunes south of Garden City. So he did. 

 

Buffalo Dunes - a 72-par golf course - opened in 1976. A course-wide renovation plan has been put into action by current Superintendent Clay Payne, set to be completed in 2026 to celebrate the course's 50th anniversary. 

And - bonus! - their wildflowers were in full bloom and just beautiful (at that time).

 

I didn't need my book for awhile.

This beautiful array of colorful wildflowers was on the Back 9. They attract butterflies ...

... And people who appreciate nature's beauty. 

The beautifully-manicured course seems an anomaly in Western Kansas. I'm sure it benefited from better-than-average rainfall this summer and fall. 

BRIDGES - Montrose, Colorado

 The other golf outing was midway through our vacation in Montrose, Colorado. 

The par-71 Bridges course is a Nicklaus-designed course that features a number of golf cart and walking bridges, as well as native plantings, natural arroyos, rock features and waterfalls winding through 400 acres in the heart of historic Montrose. 

 

The 360-degree views of the surrounding peaks make for a memorable and scenic round of golf. Multiple tees vary the length of the course from 5,380 to 7,207 yards. Randy says he plays the "old man" tees.

 

The website says: 

The Nicklaus design team has incorporated a degree of difficulty into the course, but has also made it an enjoyable layout for the average golfer. The Bridges offers a true western club lifestyle to its residents and the Montrose community. The championship golf course is the heart of The Bridges golf community, complemented by a luxurious 23,500 square foot clubhouse, with 11,000 square feet of patio off our award-winning Remington’s Restaurant. 

We can't speak for the restaurant, but the course was beautiful. 

The Bridges at Black Canyon is approximately 65 miles south of Grand Junction and 65 miles north of Telluride on Colorado’s western slope. The property is surrounded by many natural wonders – to the east is one of the Nation’s newest National Parks – The Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. To the north is the Grand Mesa – the World’s largest flattop mountain. The views of the San Juan Mountain range from The Bridges at Black Canyon stretches the length of the southern horizon. The gently ascending Uncompahgre Plateau extends west of Montrose clear to the Utah border.

 

We would recommend both golf courses ... if you're into that kind of thing!

Prairie Sunset Finale: Symphony of the Flint Hills

There couldn't have been a more fitting theme for the 20th and final rendition of the Symphony in the Flint Hills. The concert - Prairie Sunset - was Saturday, June 14, at the Evans Family Ranch in Chase County, Kansas. The wildflower-dotted rolling hills and overcast sky provided the dramatic backdrop for this grand finale concert of the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra set in the Flint Hills. 

 

It began in 2006 with the mission to heighten appreciate and knowledge of the Flint Hills tallgrass prairie. 

Rooted in these hills, like the enduring bluestem itself, Symphony in the Flint Hills, Inc., works to build awareness for the last stand of tallgrass prairie. ... The landscape's stone, soil, flora, fauna and skies above pull on our souls and care for us, and we are called to care for this place in return. ... We envision a future where our efforts encourage people to strengthen the Kansas prairie by sustaining the region's unique culture and landscape.

From the Mission Statement - Symphony of the Flint Hills 

This was not downtown Kansas City - by any stretch of the imagination. While city drivers sometimes have to dodge potholes after a brutal winter, they don't come across too many signs like this:

 

There was only one way in and out of the concert venue, set in the pasture in rural Strong City. It created a different kind of traffic jam as vehicles made their way north of U.S. 50 and down roads white with the dust of the area's limestone. (It took us 2 hours to travel the seven or so miles from the highway to the pasture.)

As we placed our water jug and program between our lawn chairs, we saw evidence that this was a working pasture and felt right at home. (For the uninitiated, those are a couple of dried cow patties.)

 

After 20 years, the concert volunteers had the logistics down to a science. Once we arrived, we quickly parked and caught a ride on a pickup-pulled wagon to the tents set up in the pasture. 

Unfortunately, because of traffic, we didn't arrive in time for any of the afternoon seminars. 

 

They delayed the concert start for 30 minutes, hoping to get more of the concert goers to the venue in time to hear the opening strains of the Celebration Overture by Peter Boyle. That same piece had opened the 2016 version of the Symphony of the Flint Hills - the only other time I'd attended, that time with Brent. This was Randy's first time, since he had been baling in 2016 and couldn't make the trip with me. When he saw it was the final opportunity, he got tickets to celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary. 

 

It was the perfect gift and well worth the wait.  

While making our way from the highway to the concert site, we'd seen lots of wildflowers lining the ditches in a rainbow of colors. I did think about jumping out of the car to take photos, but didn't. I didn't find as many in the pasture itself, though I did take photos of a few. 

 

This was right by our seats. It was still standing at the end of the night, surviving all the visitors.

During intermission, I wandered over to an electric fence for some photos of the prairie beyond.

 The purple lupine was a favorite wildflower.

The Flint Hills are part of the tallgrass prairie. In Kansas, they stretch from Marshall County in the north down through Riley, Geary, Pottawatomie, Wabaunsee, Morris, Lyon, Chase, Greenwood, Butler, Elk, Cowley and Chautauqua Counties and then into Oklahoma, where they are called the Osage Hills. These 5 million acres comprise the largest expanse of tallgrass prairie in the world.

The Flint Hills began as a vast inland sea 270 million years ago, which left scattered limestone and shallow soil behind. With the rocks less than a foot down, this part of the prairie was spared the plow and left in native grass. It’s the prairie mosaic that author William Least Heat-Moon called “360 degrees of sky.”

While it certainly isn't the mountains of Colorado, it's also very different from the stereotypical flat lands of Kansas. 

I'm a fan of clouds during sunset because they provide such a vivid painting as the light seeps through them. It was a constantly evolving scene as the light of day began to fade into a mild Kansas evening. 

 

The light and shadows played hide-and-seek in the gentle nooks and crannies of the rolling Plains covered in lush grass after plentiful spring rains. 

 

Kansas City Symphony Conductor Daniel Wiley directed a program that also included John Henry and Saturday Night Waltz by Aaron Copland, as well as George Gershwin's Summertime and Dvorak's finale from The New World Symphony. As the orchestra's notes rose and fell, it certainly seemed like the perfect celebration of music and nature's beauty. 

I am used to seeing cattle in pastures, but watching the cowboys drive the cattle across the landscape while an orchestra played was a little different from our 4-wheeler round-ups. (My photos aren't great of the cattle drive and cowboys.)

As the concert came to an end, the 8,000 or so spectators, donors and volunteers stood and sang "Home on the Range," a tradition of Symphony in the Flint Hills.

I thought about the words to a less-familiar verse of Kansas' state song, "Home on the Range," words that we'd just sung in unison:

How often at night when the heavens are bright

With the light from the glittering stars

Have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed

If their glory exceeds that of ours.

Yes ... indeed.

We didn't think there was any need to hurry away from the concert site. We decided we'd much rather take in the after-concert activities than sit in the car in stop-and-go traffic. 

 Lots of us watched the powwow dancers. The area now known as the Flint Hills was once the ancestral homelands of the Kansa (Kaw) and Osage Nations and the traditional hunting grounds of Siouan, Wichita and Pawnee people who relied on the great herds of bison once so abundant there. 

Country singer and Kansas native Logan Mize had sung his song, “Welcome to Prairieville,.”with the symphony. After leading the audience-participation rendition of Home on the Range,  he moved to the beverage tent to entertain into the evening. 

 We didn't get home until after 1:30 AM, but it was worth the late night (early morning). 

The Flint Hills don't take your breath away. 

They give you a chance to catch your breath.

Jim Hoy - Cowboy and historian - 1939-2025 

 

What a wonderful grand finale! Thank you to all the volunteers who made it possible.  

As directed, I didn't record any of the concert. But with no wind, the sound was spectacular. I found this short clip online - just in case you're interested. (CLICK HERE.)