For some reason, here in the Midwest, it feels like spring happens overnight. Regardless of what the calendar says, one day, the muddy gray, rainy landscape turns lush and green. Crocuses seem to bloom and leaves fill out branches seemingly overnight.

Like when Dorothy steps out of her Kansas cabin, newly landed over the rainbow, everything goes from black and white to Technicolor.

Fall announces itself slowly. The leaves on trees start turning colors. The temperature goes back and forth between hot and dry to cool. People debate whether it’s time to remove and store window air conditioners or wait a little longer. Fall creeps up over weeks.

That’s somehow fitting. After all, we mark births by an exact day and hour. Dying or going into hibernation is a process.

One day last week, while I was walking home from my physical therapy appointment, I saw a small collection of sunflowers in front of the Bateman Elementary School.

A few blooms were low to the ground but several came up over four feet. Sunflowers, I read, tend to open up mid-summer or in the fall. Somehow, they seem especially suited to fall.

Their golden color seems to go with the changing colors of leaves; the burnt orange and blazing red or crackling brown.

Generally, one bloom comes out per stem. For me, spring and summer seem like more social times. Activities, like picnics or concerts, are enjoyed in groups. Fall seems to be more of a solitary season. In October, I might put some thought into what movies I want to include in my Netflix queue or what foods I might want to stock in my cabinets or freezer.  I expect to be at home more — alone.

And of course, sunflowers actually turn to face the sun during daylight hours. This so captures the mood of fall. Knowing that the sun will be scarcer to see and feel on my face and arms for months, I want to drink in sunlight now as much as I can.

It’s funny to think of the season as having a special bloom, and maybe it’s just my tendency to want to see what’s unique or special about things, but I have an unusual fondness for sunflowers.

I don’t even think about cutting them or buying a bunch at a farmer’s market and bringing them home to put in a vase.

They’re at their best when they out in the wild, when they’re overgrown and a little unruly, when they crown a fibrous and thick stem in such fullness it’s automatic to think they could topple the plant over; when they share their space but are not too close to each other. Maybe part of their beauty is that each sunflower seems to be a solo act.

So, I had to snap a picture of this sunflower in front of the playground of the Bateman School. It was about my height (5’4”) and perfectly imperfect.

The head or bloom of a sunflower is actually composed of many flowers. I stared at the small yellow petals, ray flowers, that fanned around the dark mysterious center, a mega-cluster of disk flowers that clung to each other as they turned towards the brightest spot in the sky and sought warmth.

Standing in front of a flower, face-to-face, is no small thing.