A Sleepy Sunflower Sunrise

 Only 40 minutes from home is a rural sunflower farm, nestled in the Shenandoah valley, by the river, and with the wonderful name of Lost Bottoms. With its fairy tale name, I was entranced, especially as they invited people to come and admire their sunflowers from dawn to dusk, and for free, although donations are accepted. I'd been trying to come for a couple of weeks, but being floored by COVID, had been unable to venture out onto the driveway, let alone out to a field in the middle of the boondocks. But on Saturday, I felt well enough to drive out there, and left early morning, so I arrived just after sunrise.

I was the only person there, and it was beautiful. A cool breeze wafted across the fields, the dawn colors were slowly fading into the pale blue sky, and I was surrounded by flowers. There were rows of cosmos and zinnias in front of the sunflower field, and a small bench with scissors to cut any flowers you wanted to take home with you. I walked into the sunflower field, thousands of bright yellow faces turned to greet me, and noticed immediately that there were thousands of bees on the flowers, still, and sleeping. It was incredible, I'd never seen anything like it. The cuteness of finding a bee snoozing in a flower at home is delightful, witnessing so many of them slumbering in this field was simply overwhelming. I had to just stand and stare, and the more I looked around the field, the more flowers I noticed had little bumblebees fast asleep. And so I stood there, watching as the warm rays of the sun began to awaken them, and some started to stretch their little legs and slowly crawl across the flower heads to grab an early morning dose of nectar, while plenty of others were deciding to sleep in. It was a momentous occasion.

I walked very slowly among the flowers, not wanting to disturb anybody's sleep, and took care not to knock any flower heads as I slowly strolled along the path. I was actually in a sunflower maze. The sunflowers only came up to my shoulders, but I had no idea where the path would take me through the flowers, and didn't really care. I was happy to wander where I was led.

The whole field had an enchanted feel to me now, with the dreamy bees, but also because the sunflowers were entwined with blue and white morning glories. I had no idea whether they'd been sown intentionally, or if they were just 'weeds', but it added a wonderful entangled dimension to the field, with twisting vines climbing up the stalks and framing the sunflower heads. It was gorgeous. I have to add here that my photos are not the best. Due to my fuddled brain from being ill, I had the camera on the wrong setting and so all these shots are merely JPGs, and not RAW images as I usually take. So I wasn't able to do much processing, but this just merely gives me a reason to return next year, when I think I'll try to arrive even earlier in the morning.

I took my time walking around the field, delighting in seeing more bees waking up and slowly stumbling across the sunflower heads. I don't think I've ever seen so many bees in one place before, it was magical. Birds were twittering and gooses honked from behind trees, likely on the river banks. Crows croaked, and goldfinches swooped and bobbed across the tops of the sunflowers, abruptly landing on one that looked particularly tasty. The pale golden dawn light was disappearing as the sun rose higher above the mountains, and more bees became active as they warmed up. The blue morning glories began to fold up their petals, but the white ones stayed open a little longer. They were all wrapped and twisted around the sunflowers, tendrils peeking out above the large flower heads, or reaching across a space to latch onto anotherone. They obviously didn't hurt the sunflowers at all, I didn't see one sunflower looking as though it was being strangled, even though the thin vines were twisting the whole lengths of the sunflower stalks.

The day got brighter, and I felt I needed to retreat. The sunlight was getting whiter and hotter, and I was becoming conscious of a headache starting, which would later become another migraine. I took a last long look at this wonderful field, coming to life as the buzzing became louder, and stopped to just take one last photo of some bees that were still waking up, slowly trundling around the sunflower as they rubbed the sleep from their eyes.