Tournesols

Sunflowers. Summer is the time of year for sunflowers, and many of the farmers around our area plant whole fields of them. I believe that they're harvested for their seeds, which are processed to make oil. We use a lot of sunflower oil at our house.

It's really worth clicking on this photo to see it larger.

On Wednesday we were on our way to Vouvray to buy some wine and we passed several large fields of blooming sunflowers. Ken stopped the car so that I could snap a few photos. The flowers are a beautiful sight to see; fields full of brilliant yellow.

We notice that the farmers rotate their crops each year. One year they might plant sunflowers, the next corn, then colza, then maybe wheat or barley, and then back to sunflowers. And there are always some of each somewhere. It's a constantly changing show, year after year.

Acres and acres of sunflowers.

And while you might normally think of sunflowers as a Provençal crop in France (à la Van Gogh), they obviously do well up here in the Touraine region, too. In fact, like many of our neighbors, we planted a row of them in our garden. But ours haven't opened yet. I'll be sure to post pictures when they do.