:: helianthus annus ::

I know, I know, I know - I already did the sunflower on the 1st.  Which answers one of the questions slopping around in my brain these past couple of weeks.  Am I allowed to repeat a flower type? OF COURSE I CAN. I can do what I like with MY blog :-).  

Doesn't this look like an almost painful birth? So scrunched up. So tight. Spring-loaded? So spiky-looking. Such an incredible transformation to the fully-opened bloom just days later. 

I think I hold images of flowers as the final product of a newly-opened bloom and forget about the stages before and then after...why is that? Those stages are just so fascinating and the newly-opened bloom such a fleeting moment, just like all the others.  And yet, at a flower's apex of development is mostly how they are depicted. Weird. Or interesting? hmmm...