#blacksunflowers

Have you ever basked in the beauty of these #blacksunflowers? Big thanks to my housemates for making this my daily view. I love it and it makes my day everyday 🌻😍 (at River Lea Hackney) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTTLquLjGiS/?utm_medium=tumblr

I’m so completely honored and thrilled that one of my sunflower photos (taken way back In 2012!) was featured yesterday in a Canadian poetry journal alongside this beautiful poem by Redgina Jean-Paul… Black SunFlower by Redgina Jean-Paul I am going over every single little thing every single— And I wish I could turn it off stop the train in its— Track my thoughts, pull them back, nocked-arrow’s fletching, set them— Free to choose, I wish… I want it to End. I do. I want perfect pitch black sun flower bed fellow man made  disaster. — from Juniper Volume 5, Issue 1 The photo is of a red sunflower variety called Drop Dead Red which I grew in my garden in 2012 and then wrote about on my blog, which is how the editor at the poetry journal recently found it. 🌻 I have loved sunflowers my whole entire life but it wasn’t until I started doing my own gardening about 20 years ago that I discovered red sunflowers and the intense shades they come in. Ranging from rust to almost-black, I became so smitten with them in 2012, that I ordered all the red variety sunflowers seeds I could find online and then planted them all over the garden. Two months later a couple hundred bloomed! That was back when I lived in another state on a lovely rural farm with cows for neighbors and my favorite camera 📸 always in hand. Sadly, my camera died a tragic death three years ago but I’m happy to still have the sunflower photos and the memories of those big patches of red faces dancing on the breeze. They added quite a bit of drama to the garden that year! It’s so fun to see that they also add a little bit of drama to poetry too:) ♥️ Cheers to Lisa and Redgina at Juniper for bringing these garden memories to light. And extra cheers to Redgina for her beautiful poem. 🥂 The journal added a a filter to my original photo giving it a pretty painterly effect. Included in this batch is the original photo I took along with other red sunflowers from the garden that year so that you can see the range of colors they come in. . . . . . #sunflowers #redsunflowers #poetry #blacksunflowers #poetryjournal #featuredphoto #canadianpoetry #redginajeanpaul #juniperpoetry #gardenstories https://www.instagram.com/p/CQeEQLcglES/?utm_medium=tumblr