Fields of sunflowers in bloom near Ijams

Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) 

Oh my gosh!

If you're into the color yellow. Then park your car at Ijams and walk east along the Will Skelton Greenway to Forks of the River Wildlife Management Area.

The 400-plus acre parcel is managed for wildlife by TWRA and they plant field after field after field of sunflowers.

All during the month of July these fields are a sea of vibrant, intoxicating yellow, enough to make painter Vincent van Gogh swoon because the Post-Impressionist artist loved that color, used it intensely. 

Vincent—if I may be so bold as to call him by his first name since we never actually met—painted numerous canvases of sunflowers while living in Provence in southern France in the late 1800s. And all of the sunflowers he painted originated in America. Once sunflower seeds were exported to Europe in the 16th century, the sunny yellow American flowers became very popular.

- Text and photo by Stephen Lyn Bales