Are you ready for the big event today, the first total solar eclipse to span the U.S. since 1918?
The path of totality is 70 miles southwest of us, so we’ll experience a 97% partial eclipse in our backyard in North Carolina.
Since most everyone in the U.S. will be following the sun and the path of the eclipse, either in person, by living streaming, or on television, I thought I’d share some sun tracking by the sunflowers!
As sunflowers grow, they track the sun’s movement in the sky from east to west. This is caused by the growth pattern of the sunflower, with one side of the stem elongating during the day, followed by the other side elongating during the night.
The growth is driven by genes that respond to light and the plant’s circadian rhythm. As the sunflower matures and growth slows as the flower opens up, they stop their daylight tracking movement and face east. You can find a more scientific explanation, here.
Here’s an interesting tidbit: *Bee*cause east-facing flowers warm up quicker, they attract five times as many pollinators as west-facing flowers! 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
I’m sharing a little sunflower love today from the archives, click on the links for the complete post and details if you’d like to track the sunflowers. 🌻
In the Potting Shed: Fleur Du Soleil
Rooster Meadow Table
Roosters, sunflowers, and vibrant fall linens make a bright transition from summer to fall at the table.
Sunflowers on the Porch
Crowing in Delight and Sunflowers
Sunflowers & Bees Tablescape
If you have plans for viewing the 2017 solar eclipse, follow the safety tips from Nasa on how to view safely and protect your eyesight!
Thank you for your visit, sharing with:
Metamorphosis Monday
You captured the sun flower ! So beautiful! My favorite flower, puts a smile on my face!🌻🌻🌻
Oh my, my, my! Outstanding compilation, and I love the nerdy facts (and plan to dig into). We’ll have 85-90% coverage today, and it’s a sunny day! I read where the traffic on I-77 out of Charlotte is expected to be ginormous after it’s over…hope you don’t have anywhere to go! Happy eclipse day!
Thanks Rita! We avoid 77 like the plague on any given day so I can just imagine the nightmare it will be with an additional 2 million cars travelling through to S.C and to the NC mountains today. I wished my husband well as he left for work and asked if he had a full tank of gas! :)
Love your post today, Sunflower is my favorite, love the sunflower dishes especially the square ones. I too have a sunflower tablecloth on my dining room table for the month of August and September, and a mesh sunflower wreath on my front door.
Mary, thanks for that information that I totally did not know. I love sunflowers until they start smelling.
Wow! Who needs coffee when your sunflowers have so much “POW!” A beautiful wake-up collage!! I’m in Jax’ville, FL and it looks like we’ll be under cloud cover with 60% chance of showers, will have to watch the whole thing on TV. It’s too dang hot to be outside anyway! :o)
This has been perfect in every way. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Sunflowers are my favorite and this has been beyond beautiful and fun. I appreciate all your time and efforts.
Sunny definition: full of sunshine. Just like your post today. So cheerful!
I love your post, and I adore how sunflowers’ little heads follow the sun’s path throughout the day. Poor little dudes! They will be confused today!!!
I think the traffic will be bad here in Birmingham heading north to Huntsville and Nashville. Our local library is having a viewing party, but we made our projection boxes and will watch it here at home (probably)….not sure I trust glasses made in China!
Enjoy your day!
xo,
RJ
Thanks for the compilation of Sunflowers from your archives for 2017 solar eclipses! I’ll return to check them all out. The first flowers I ever planted as a child were sunflowers. They grew to about 6 feet! Enjoy watching the solar eclipses everyone. Jo
Mary, this post is simply perfect in every way. The beauty, the factual info and the work to create such a masterpiece is quite a feat. We are suppose to have a 99 percent view of the eclipse in Asheville. Have a wonderful day. Dianne
I had no idea sunflowers did that!! That is so incredible! Your photos with the bees are stunning~ my latest drawing of sunflowers should be called Mary’s sunflowers because I drew them from your watering can and several other of your photos 🌻 Since I already have a design called Mary’s Bloom, I just named them sunflowers, but I think of you. I hope your hubby makes it home today, the traffic sounds like it will be a mess! We are in the 80% range on the coast, the one time this summer I should have been in Birmingham {92%} I’ve heard the animals get very confused, you’ll have to let us know how Chloe and Gracie react!
Jenna
Pretty tables, lovely flowers and great information. Thanks for the video. We won’t see anything in MI, will have to watch it through NASA or the news.
What beautiful images you have shared today, both lovely flowers, what lovely dishes and tablescapes. A beautiful nod to today’s eclipse!
I totally echo the wonderful comment of Chloe Crabtree…todays post was wonderful!
Thank you!! Now I will know which way is east when I pass a field of sunflowers…I never knew that about them! We are getting ready to experience 99.72% totality under sunny skies…a beautiful morning here in Boring, Oregon! Happy eclipsing!
Mary, thanks for sharing your sunflowers. I love them and visited a farm in July with an entire field, in all their glory! So pretty. Right now on I-40 to Asheville the sunflower planting are “smiling” at the passer-bys. Enjoyed remembering all your beautiful sunflower posts from other years.
That would be dangerous for me see as I was driving by Darlene. I’d drive off the road trying to catch a glimpse. 🌻😀
Beautiful tribute to the sunflower. We are in the totality and are ready with sunflowers and glasses–DH is closing his office for a few hours. My eldest isn’t in the titality zone (coastal carolina) but his wife wauted in line 38 minutes at Krispy Kreme for eclipse donuts! Yes, I am staying off the roads!
Fat fingers struck again–please forgive the typis! Er, typos!😃🌻🌻🌞🌘🌑🌓
These are beautiful! Where do you store all these dishes? I thought I had a lot. Your settings are always so inviting.
Thanks Cynthia, The Rooster Meadow and Crowing with Delight were sponsored tables and I didn’t keep the dinnerware. I used the same sunflower bowls/dishes in the Potting Shed and porch post.
Your posts are so beautiful 🌸
Good Afternoon Mary, you featured my favorite flowers, they seem to always lift our spirits with their bright yellow blooms. My husband plants them in our vegetable garden every spring, of course many pop up from the previous year’s seeds left behind by the birds. Did you paint the galvanized watering can? I have painted Sunflowers 🌻 on wine glasses and now you have inspired me yet another time, thank you.
Very informative and BEAUTIFUL post today!!! Love love love the TABLESCAPES!!! Hope your Hubby avoids the traffic!!! We are staying off I-85 in Greenville today!!! Enjoy the eclipse, Mary! Not long now!!! Headed out in the heat with our eclipse glasses!!! We are almost on the 100% line!!! So excited to read your great and timely post!!! Thanks Mary!!!
Sunflowers are my absolute favorites! Thank you for the beautiful post.
Brilliant post…in more ways than onw…Loved it!
This post today I had to look again and again….I Love Sunflowers!!! Every table setting is Beautiful! Roosters to say Good Morning and Sunflowers that says I Love You…..what a beautiful start of the day!
Every post is lovely and informative. Thank you!!
Mary, what a beautiful post celebrating the happy sunflower. Beautiful photography and tablescapes! We were seeing about 95% totality. My son was able to get some really great shots with his camera and his drone! Have a wonderful week!
Mary~
Thank you for sharing this very interesting information !! Sunflowers are saying “Fall” is on its way to me :)
Paula
In.
Mary, this post is just extraordinarily beautiful and you taught me some things I didn’t know about sunflowers. Sadly, most of mine are dying in the garden but I sure have enjoyed them this year! Hope you were able to see the eclipse. We drove about 30 miles so that we would be in the band of totality and it was AWESOME!
What an apropos post today…such a sunny delight to enjoy! You certainly pay attention to detail…loved how you placed your antique garden shears perfectly for the bird to appear perched upon it! :) Your blog is superb!!!
Sunshine on a stem (Sunflowers) are my favorite!! Your tables are beautiful and worth a 2nd, 3rd & 4th look just to take it all in…during the eclipse, my sunflowers were hanging their heads..didn’t matter to the yellow finches, they can hang on upside down…a storm last week blew one of my big ones down..just cut the blooms and put them in an old birdbath for the birds to enjoy!!! I used to cut most for arrangements but I don’t so much anymore, I don’t want to take away the birds food…thanks for brightening our day!! Next Solar Eclipse is supposed to be in April 2024. Therefore, hang onto those glasses!! 😎🌻🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑🌒🌓🌔🌚🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻
Absolutely fabulous post, Mary. So inspirational as we make the transition from summer to fall. Your posts make my day! Your photography is first rate, and the attention to detail you demonstrate is outstanding.
Mary,
I live here in sunny Arizona and don’t know if I could grow all the beautiful flowers you do.
However, I can’t begin to tell you how much I enjoy your posts. It makes my day. You are so upbeat and you give us all so much inspiration. Thank you so much.
You rock!
Pat Breyfogle Tucson, AZ
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
Thanks so much for your sweet comment and visits Pat! 🌻🌼🌸🌺 🌞
Love all your photos, Mary! I was able to view the eclipse with my mom, sister, niece and my son, Mike, when we went to Ohio for my reunion. We ate Moon Pies and had a nice, little party!
I never fail to be amazed at the depth of your posts and today is no exception. Informative, entertaining and inspirational! Someday I hope I’ll get to meet you, perhaps on Lake Norman. Thank you. Your posts make my day!
So many beautiful images here!!! Sunflowers are one of my all time favorites – so your post – is now one of my all time favorites!!! The eclipse was a real phenomenon, We had some of the special glasses and was pleasantly surprised how well we could see it evolve. I like the way you tied the sunflower with this event – very clever!
You are a woman after my own heart!! Sunflowers are my favorites and now I know a lot more about them!
Thanks.
Such a cute tie in! Eclipse, what eclipse, pure fog as usual! Seeing your porch takes me back, way back, pre shed days, look at all your blooming fun now!
Oh you have beautifully inspired with the sunflower I have so become so fascinated with sunflower Now if I had sunflower seeds
Oh, it will take me awhile to get through all these wonderful sunflower posts, even if I saw them before!!! I did a sunflower table last week, they are always such a bright, happy, cheerful table!
In addition to all of the beauty you bring to us, you also give us the most wonderful information on the subject matter of the day…..yes, beauty with education. What a thrill to have experienced the solar eclipse in our lifetime….life is good and you certainly enhance our lives with your sharing of the beauty that you create and the beauty that surrounds you!
Greetings Mary,Loved this post! Are the chicken and sunflower dishes still made?Who makes them? Two of my favorite things on one dish, would beperfect for me.Thank you for all the time and effort you put in to wonderful posts. Ican appreciate the time and effort it takes. Also LOVE the wonderfulflower books you have featured in the posts.I am a tablescape-aholic and have the dish disease to go along with it.Have been collecting for forty-eight years.My husband recently built me a dish room, stealing some room from theenormous garage. Now 80% of my collection is in one place and it isthrilling. After he builds the built in buffet in the dining room I will be able to unpack the remaining boxes. Would you believe I have had topack this collection twice in five years as we had an unexpected movelast November. God blessed us with six sons, and obviously they arenot in to dishes!!! Ha ha. But three are married and two have seriousgirlfriends so they appreciate my tables. We often have twelve to fourteenat the table so I have learned to mix some of my settings. Only havethree sets that will serve 16 to 20 people. Have enjoyed making themixed settings look like I did it on purpose. Which obviously I did! Theboys are so impressed with the organization in the dish room they showtheir friends when they visit. I think that’s a hoot.Thanks for letting me babble, love talking dishes!God bless,Susan Schmidt/Wisconsin
Thank you Susan! How fun to have a dish room and too funnny that your boys show it off! :) The pattern is Pfaltzgraff Rooster Meadow and it’s still available: http://www.pfaltzgraff.com/patterns-and-collections/rooster-meadow?gclid=CjwKCAjwos7NBRAWEiwAypNCe2EtbBJ84bUC5rLKkJQbuRD3gXz-jJ1o9QZXE-EnhOGtQrDxIfVKCBoCnvcQAvD_BwE