Sunflowers...

“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows. It's what the sunflowers do.”

-Helen Keller

While riding around in my neighborhood I noticed that many yards and gardens were adorn with beautiful sunflowers. They stood tall and cheery above all the other plants and flowers with their bright yellow "faces" seemingly bathing in the summer sun...they make me smile.  So even though I did not plant any sunflowers in my yard or garden I did do a bit of decorating with some faux. (will attach pics at the end of this post.  But for now here are some facts about this cheery fun flower ...

 

•The stem of a sunflower can grow up to 10 ft tall and the flower head can be 11.8 in wide.

•Sunflowers are very fast growing plants, in the right conditions they can grow 8-12 feet tall in six months.

•As of 2012, the Guinness World Record for the tallest sunflower is 27 ft for a sunflower grown in Germany.

•Famous Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh did a series of paintings featuring and called Sunflowers.

•There are two kinds of sunflower seeds. Sunflower oil which is used in cooking and in margarines is made from black seeds and snack food is made from the striped seeds. The seeds can also be used as bird feed.

•Sunflowers can also be processed into a peanut butter substitute called Sunbutter. In Germany, sunflower seeds are mixed with rye flour to make a type of bread (Sonnenblumenkernbrot).

•The sunflower is native to the America's and was used extensively by Native American Indians for food, as oil, in bread, medical ointments, dyes and body paints.

•Kansas is often known as the Sunflower state and the flower is in fact Kansas's state flower. The sunflower is also the national flower of Ukraine.

•Sunflowers can be used to extract toxin such as lead, arsenic and uranium from contaminated soil. For example, sunflowers were used to remove toxins from a pond after the Chernobyl disaster and similar projects took place after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

While doing my fun "research" on sunflowers, it's interesting to know how popular they are. They are used in:

Clothing:


Strapless dress
 

Gown and jacket

Bowtie
 

Neck tie

Jewelry:

Handbags:

Of Course Bouquets:

Food:

 

Pottery:

And we can't forget "Sunflower" Pups!:

I'm so thankful that God made Sunflowers...hope these pictures made you smile ...

 

“Think how the flowers grow. They do not work or make cloth. Yet, I tell you, that King Solomon in all his greatness was not dressed as well as one of these flowers.” Luke 12:27
 (New Living Translation)

Here's my Sunflowers around the house: