These keep coming back every year. These sunflowers that grew the first year we moved to this area. I see them along the roads and out in some of the fields. The birds must have brought them to the house and spread their seeds so that I could look upon them each summer.
I think they keep coming back because they know how much I love nature and love looking at the birds flitter around for the seeds once the flowers start to age.
I used my plant app on my phone to look up the name of this sunflower and it brought back that it was a "Helianthus Annuus" or just a "common Sunflower". The location must be ideal for the sunflowers because they seem to come back in this same location year after year.
The birds and bees have been at this flower for a few days as you can see that some of the pollen has fallen onto the leaves right below the flower.
It usually has several blooms open at the same time and continues to produce flowers all summer long. It will start to get a lot drier later in the summer but the sunflower does not seem to mind the dry conditions but just continues to produce more and more flowers feeding the local birds with its seeds.
A quick AI created story about this sunflower photo.
Each spring, just when the earth shook off its winter hush, a sunflower would rise—never planted, never planned. It sprouted just beyond the weathered fence, in a patch of soil no one paid much mind to. And yet, like clockwork, it arrived: a tall, golden sentinel with a face that followed the sun.
Locals liked to say it was the birds’ doing. Finches, mostly—feathered gardeners without a clue of their own artistry. They came for the seeds from last year’s bloom, tucked away in its dark center like secrets. In their flutter and feast, they scattered those tiny promises across the breeze. And somehow, one always found this spot.
The sunflower didn’t just grow—it remembered. It remembered the dusty wind of late July, the laughter of children catching fireflies at dusk, the way the sky pinked at the edges after a storm. Each bloom wasn’t just a flower—it was a returning spirit, rooted in memory and rebirth.
Neighbors began to notice. Some took photos. Others left water on especially dry days. It became a quiet ritual—watching for it, cheering its return, measuring seasons not in calendars, but in petals.
And year after year, it kept coming back. Not because anyone told it to. But because the world, in its curious way, always finds room for beauty to return where it's been loved.