GRIZABELLA SNOWFLOWER

Summer Sunflower, Jamestown, NC
Winter Snowflower, Jamestown, NC

Given the choice between a Broadway musical and a PGA tour event, I’ll take the golf tickets to the corporate tent. But living with the fairer sex for forty years did expose me to some of the finer things in life which I actually enjoyed including good musical entertainment with heart touching story lines and lyrics like Jesus Christ Superstar, Les Miz, Phantom of the Opera, Evita, Annie, and yes, Cats. There were poignant moments in all of these experiences that made you stop the music and reflect on your life. It also didn’t hurt that my daughter performed in many of these musicals as a teenager and was a joy to watch.

I had one of those moments in the middle of a dark sunflower field this morning. The first major winter storm of the season roared through the Carolinas last night bringing heavy rain turning to freezing rain, sleet, wet snow and power outages. Rare claps of thundersnow issued fatalistic warnings which the natives claim will foretell another winter storm in ten days. I had previously photographed the sunflower field in the prime of summer’s golden glory and happened upon one particular sunflower on the far edge of the field that was entwined in morning glory vines that highlighted this one creation for its unique beauty.

As I later drove past the field, it had occurred to me that the blackened plants might be interesting to photograph against a white blanket of fresh snow. Once I had shoveled the snow accumulation off my driveway, I gathered up my camera gear and drove off to fulfill the promise of another photo op. Fortunately, the rising morning sunbeams were beginning to warm the road surfaces, but nature’s organic surfaces still held the wet snow that had clung to all surfaces overnight, including the sunflower field. As I began looking through the camera lens for images that might prove interesting, I slowly made my way through the frozen field. And then while scanning the bowed heads for something out of the ordinary, the very same sunflower that had caught my eye this summer came into my view finder. The image with now barren vines immediately reminded me of one of the principal Jellicles in the musical Cats--Grizabella.

Grizabella had once enjoyed a life of carefree youthful exuberance amid the tribe of Jellicle cats, but they had shunned her in her waning years. Her decrepit and faded appearance at the Jellicle Ball in the junk yard initially did nothing to raise her stock as she vied to be the one chosen to go to the Heaviside Layer and be reborn to a new Jellicle Life. But the haunting lyrics of the song she sang about her memory of better days and hope for a new restored life won them over to her side. The faded sunflower surely was alone in the moonlight last night as withered leaves collected at her feet and the wind began to moan when the winter storm rapidly descended on the Jellicle field. When the dawn came, the street lights died and the night became just another memory. A new day heralding new life had begun as the morning glory blooms had been transformed and bright sunshine revealed a glimmering pure white robe cloaked around the renewed snowflower as her memory of days in the sun lives on.

FIELD OF FULFILLED DREAMS

Winter Sunflowers, Greensboro, NC

Earlier this year, in the midst of summer, I happened upon one of those “lucky moments” of catching a mature field of bright yellow sunflowers in full bloom at sunset. All of their shining faces were upright and eagerly absorbed the life-giving rays of Light. It was truly a “field of dreams”, bright with the expectation of full life and warm sunshine. Now, we have entered the fallow season of winter and the blooms are gone. The green leaves have turned brown and the seed pods are acquiescing to the cycle of life. All of nature has withdrawn and the distant stand of trees is strangely quiet as cool sunbeams peer over the western horizon.

At first glance, the sunflowers look defeated and decimated—my first draft of this blog was entitled “Field of Broken Dreams”. Their heads are lowered and lifeless. The vibrancy of the colorful field of dreams has passed and yielded to a more solemn and darkened landscape. But if you take the time to ponder the scene and look closely, these sunny spirits have actually fulfilled the promise and purpose of their lives and are now in quiet repose. Although it appears that the dream has been shattered and broken, perhaps they are simply bowed in reverence and praise for the full lives that I was fortunate to witness. The Light that permeated every facet of the sunny field is now encapsulated in the promise of every seed head that has matured and patiently awaits the renewing Light of Life that will arrive on southerly winds with the first warming rays of the coming spring.

SUN FLOWERS

Sunflower Spirit, Jamestown, NC

I exited onto a spiraling loop during a recent road trip and experienced one of those rare visual feasts that sometimes await us around the next curve. Standing at the base of the loop was a field of brightly glowing sunflowers facing toward the rising morning sun in the east. Vincent Van Gogh was fascinated with painting sunflowers and they’re just as fascinating to photograph with the sun’s rays back lighting the yellow petals. I waited for the long rays of the lowering sun in the west to cast their light across the horizon and drove back to the field. Perhaps sunflowers could just as easily be called sun catchers the way they gather up sunbeams and give them color and definition. The bright colors in the sun not only attracted my curious spirit but there were also butterfly spirits deftly winging about the ripening seed faces. Whoever first named these bright reflections of the sun couldn’t have taken more than a second. These shining flowers don’t reflect light so much as they transpose it into a personification of the life force that sustains our planet.

Higher mathematics actually reveals a beautiful order underlying this seemingly chaotic world. The Fibonacci sequence of numbers is prevalent in many facets of nature such as the spiral of a chambered nautilus shell or the branching of trees. This sequence can be derived by starting with zero and one and determining the next sequential number by adding the previous two. The sequence appears to be one of the principal laws of nature. And they can be seen in the growth pattern of petals and florets in the sunflower to affirm its universal beauty and form.