Ark Valley News - The View from Sunflower Gardens

The View from Sunflower Gardens
By Marilyn Bentley
Last Updated: March 15, 2018

Kansans enjoy wildlife, nature

Native Americans and our Kansas ancestors enjoyed times with wildlife.

Drought sometimes hurt habitats for pheasants and quail. Rain in western Kansas helped for upland bird nesting.

Kansans have endured prairie fires, drought, tornadoes and blizzards. We like four seasons. Our people and the land are resilient.

Folks in Kansas enjoy state parks for camping, fishing, boating, hunting, hiking and animals. We have deer, turkey, quail and waterfowl hunting in season. Fishermen like bass, walleye, catfish and crappie.

Wildlife help make us Kansas proud.

We help save the environment.

We are proud of Kansas poets. Some write about high plains grasslands, home of good Kansas cattle.

We have both pronghorn and plenty of sagebrush.

"Potential settlers wanted land where rain was plentiful. Grasslands fed antelope, bison, coyotes and prairie birds." — J.A. Morton

We have bluegrass and buffalo grass.

"The windmills sang their song of life on the plains of sun, wind, and rainbows after rains." — J.A. Morton

"Here's to all the cowboys on cold winter ranges who see to livestock when weather brings changes." — J.A. Morton

Here at Sunflower, we like our coffee chats on Monday, Tuesday Bible study, game nights, potluck dinners, music sing-alongs and our hallway walks.

Remember to keep in prayer our troops and their families, our Congress and president.

On weekdays, we watch progress of all the construction workers here as new apartments are built for senior citizens. They use a variety of earth moving machines and road graders.

We can still see prairie from our Sunflower apartments.

As we go west in Kansas, we see pivot irrigation on water-poor land. It helps grow our wheat and corn.

One of the many blessings of living in Kansas is seeing over 200 species of wildflowers. I try to learn names of plants. We have butterfly, milkweed in orange, red, or yellow and violets, wild mustard, and Spanish needles. Also, we are the Sunflower State, with huge fields near Nickerson of sunflowers and near Lyndon near Highway 75.

There are nearly 900 species of grasses, trees, sedges, rushes and ferns near byways.

Remember: "Be kind, anyway." — Mother Teresa