Colorado Sunflower Week

It's sunflower time in Colorado. Everywhere we went this weekend in Colorado, including Ft.Collins, Boulder and the Denver area, there were sunflowers blooming. At CSU there were patches of sunflowers (and patches of corn!) in front of the student union. Sunflowers are in many of the yards in my dad's neighborhood and along the side of every road and filling fields in the countryside. In fact, there were flowers everywhere. A morning walk down Dad's street was a flower feast. Every park, traffic intersection, business establishment seemed to have a pretty flower garden in full bloom.

The sunflowers were a sweet distraction from the bitter-sweet part of dropping my Alli off at college to settle in for her freshman year. I'm so proud of her, it's hard to dwell on how MUCH I already miss her, and how FAR I am away from her, and how EMPTY her room is.

Here she is in Newsom Hall just before we left.


She's pretty wonderful, I must say.

Cori generously helped me drive home and will fly back to CO tomorrow early to get to work. She's pretty wonderful too. Although I did learn that it's not particularly safe to let a geologist drive, since an outcropping of shale can whip her neck around instantly. "Oohh! Shale!"

"OOhh! Watch the road!"

Dad and Sharron and Cori and I spent a pleasant hour or two at the Denver Botanic Garden on Saturday. Cori and I wandered with her camera.

The Water Garden


American Choice Garden


An espaliered apple tree


Wildflower Garden


Cute Kid in the Herb Garden


Familiar faces


I distracted myself handily from dramatizing my departure from Colorado this morning, leaving Alli behind, by waving back at the wild sunflowers lining the highway all the way east from Denver. They lined up in small groups and large crowds, waited til our car passed by and waved their goodbyes. Of course I waved back.

(Kansas, the "sunflower state" apparently doesn't allow sunflowers to congregate on the median or shoulder of the road, BTW.)