By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
September, perhaps the Rodney Dangerfield of months, has not always enjoyed the full measure of my respect.
Yes, there is an abundance of peach pie and moments of soft golden sunshine, but it’s still too hot for most football games and some people stare at you if you wear white after Labor Day. The month often feels more like road than destination, like a jetway between summer’s flights of freedom and autumn’s soaring palettes of color.
My longtime dissing of September, however, is about to end, thanks to the sunflowers. They bloom wild and carefree during Utah’s September, often in unexpected and inhospitable places. Their bright yellow and brown faces peek out from behind orange cones on uncultivated construction zones. They dance, as I speed by, on the untended shoulders of the Beehive State’s super highways.
No human hands plant them, but there they are—Helianthus annuus. So many of them, and I notice more each year. A transportation department landscaper once called them invasive (a nice word for “weed”) and not a “design feature.” I welcome the invasion.
Utah is a beautiful state, in its own dry desert way. Yet, apart from some handcrafted gardens, and a few weeks of late summer mountain wildflowers, it is not well known for its blossoming flora. The annual September sunflower burst is, at least for me, an emerging rival to the annual roadside bloom of the Texas spring bluebonnets.
We were there, deep in the heart of Texas, a few years ago. We went to Fort Worth during Easter to visit my sister, her husband, and their three daughters. The most memorable wildflowers of the trip, of course, were my nieces. The bluebonnets were a close second, and they graced nearly every byway we traveled.
As we drove about the Lone Star State, I saw cars pulled over for impromptu and even choreographed camera sessions, mainly featuring young children. Little beaming faces bobbed and swayed along with the delicate bonnets.
I crave such a Texas-style photo shoot amid the Utah sunflowers, particularly in one prolific tawny field along my usual freeway commuting route. Utah law, however, prohibits non-emergency stops there.
Like any good lawyer, I can justify an “emergency stop” to any police officer who might challenge my pedestrian presence on the highway: “The sunflowers offered a golden respite to my Monday morning drive, a sanctuary from the weight of looming personal or professional burdens that bear down on me.” Alternatively: “As I drove home, depleted by the toils of the day, a xanthous zest beckoned me, promising sustenance and invigoration for the evening ahead.”
Despite these compelling arguments, I likely will get a traffic ticket and fine if I stop, thus I have implemented a backup plan. We planted wild sunflowers in our back yard for the first time. My wife fretted they would not survive our gardening negligence, enthusiastic grandpuppies, and/or backyard pestilences, but they did.
They are about seven or eight feet tall and in full bloom. I now can see and smell and feel Utah’s sunflowers without legal peril or speedway hazards. When I see the glorious blossoms, I think of the Gospels of Luke and Matthew: “Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.”
Martin Luther once said, “God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.” He must have been thinking about September in Salt Lake City.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.
