Sunny Disposition
There are many varieties of sunflower, and I'm no expert. This might be Maximilian. But the precise taxonomy I will leave to others; to me, it's just a bright, beautiful sunflower shining happily at the side of the woodland. I saw it and many of its kinfolk as I walked yesterday evening, just before sundown. Rumbles of thunder, passing showers, and dire warnings on my phone from the weather service had kept me indoors all day, making me peevish and fidgety, but near the end of the day I said the heck with it (or maybe it wasn't "heck"), shoved my gear into the car (making sure to include a raincoat), and drove across the county line to a park out in the country. I needed exercise, fresh air, woods and fields.
Starting out on the trail, recalcitrant muscles and unstretched tendons and ligaments began sending me messages: "Oh, are we going to have to work for a living again?" For days, the most walking they'd been asked to do was in the canned goods and frozen food aisles, or downstairs to the laundry room. Frequent heavy rains had left the walking trails sodden, squishy and slick, and for the first half mile my legs complained about how rudely they were being treated. But soon they stretched out and got into familiar rhythm, and stopped their whining. As I walked, the clouds to the west thinned, then parted, and the setting sun sneaked under them to scatter warm light, at first bashfully, then brazenly asserting itself. When I came around a corner to a stretch of trail heading east, between a broad field and the woods, a patch of bright yellow sunflowers (possibly Maximilian) nodded happily in front of me. After I'd passed half of them, I turned around to see how they'd look with the sun behind them, and ah! yes! just as I had hoped! Backlit, the sunny yellow petals were stunning. I looked for one that was facing me, just a bit isolated, and not too tall, so I could look it directly in the eye. In a few minutes I had found my model, posing proudly.