PHILADELPHIA-Matt Maximuck is a down-to-earth kind of guy, not exactly prone to bouts of whimsy.
"I'm a farmer," he said, as if that were all the explanation needed.
But even he has to just stop his tractor from time to time, simply to soak up the glow from the swath of sunflowers on his Buckingham, Pa., farm.
Likewise John Hicks, who planted 5 acres of sunflowers on his East Goshen, Pa., farm as a thank-you to the community that puts up with the rumblings and dust clouds of his tractors.
Then there's Paul Andriole, who mowed paths through his field of sunflowers in Oxford, Pa., so neighbors could walk amid the golden heads that nod agreeably in a gentle summer breeze.
"It seems each one has its own personality," Andriole said. "When you approach them, it seems like they're all looking at you and all trying to say hello."
Then he paused. "I don't usually say stuff like this," he said, almost puzzled.
Sunflowers, it seems, just do that to people. It's as if they cast a bit of magic on an otherwise harried, worrisome and lovelorn world.
Compared with other crops, sunflowers are hardly big-time. In 1997, the last year figures are available, a mere 18 Pennsylvania farms grew sunflowers commercially, producing 227,000 pounds of seeds on 433 acres.
But the flowers seem to occupy a special place in hearts of the people in the region who grow them - whether farmers like Maximuck, who plants 20 acres, or someone like the resident on North Franklin Street in West Chester who planted one stalk out by the mailbox.
A daily visit
Andriole visits his 5 acres of flowers every day. Walking past the sign that says "Sunflowers at Summit Hill, Dedicated to the Community - the Andrioles," he enters another world.
"They just take you away from your daily chores and to a nice, serene, comfortable place where everyone is smiling," he said. Out in their midst, immersed in their lemony hue, it can be "absolutely uplifting."
Andriole, Chester County's director of consumer affairs, used to grow corn in the field at the foot of Summit Avenue. Two years ago, he and his wife, Becky, decided to grow sunflowers to renew the soil. It turned out to be such a positive thing that they did it again this year.
On a recent Friday, as bees buzzed from flower to flower and butterflies flitted among purple thistles at the field's edge, Jack Christian walked his dog along the path.
He and his wife were visiting from Philadelphia and were amazed at the sight. "It's impressive," he said. "After living in the city for 55 years, to find a place like this "
One day, a painter - a latter-day van Gogh? - brought his canvas. A third-grade teacher brought her class. Andriole tells folks to bring a knife, cut a few flowers, and take them home.
"We're delighted," he said of the whole experience. "It just couldn't be nicer."
Hicks initially planted sunflowers as food and habitat for wildlife. But it was humans who showed the most appreciation.
People called him to say, "I was having a bad day, and I saw the sunflowers and I felt better."
The field is so vibrant that Hicks, an engineer who works in Lancaster County, refers to the sight as "a joyful noise."
Standing and gazing at it, as he often does, "makes me feel very, very happy."
Smiling back
"I think there's almost a bit of comedy" in sunflowers, he said. "I think they look back at you and kind of laugh and smile."
Maybe sunflowers have something of Alice-in-Wonderland in them. While marigolds stop at a foot or so and zinnias at 3, sunflowers keep on going, up to 4 feet, 5, even 6.
Thirteen-year-old Andrew Hallman hardly knew what to make of it this year, when one of the sunflowers he planted in his garden in Upper Providence, Montgomery County - he thinks they have "a nice color" - surged past the rest. Its mammoth flower eventually grew to 16.5 inches across, enough to win at the recent Montgomery County 4-H Fair.
Fair judge Rebecca Boylan, a horticulturist with the Penn State Cooperative Extension, was impressed. And she's an expert. She grows about a dozen varieties of sunflower in her garden in Upper Pottsgrove, Montgomery County.
"Normally, we'll have a couple sunflowers and they're not that big," she said. This year, there were more than ever, with "the biggest blooms ever."
Henry Yorgey, an East Coventry, Chester County, high-school music teacher who tends a 10-acre farmette, grows sunflowers mostly for the birds. He loves to see the yellow finches swoop over the field, alighting to munch.
"By the end of the season," he said admiringly, cupping a flower in his hand, "this will be totally picked by the birds." But sometimes he, like Maximuck, Hicks and the rest, can't help but linger, admiring the flowers that lift their burnished faces to the morning sun.
"I come out here," he said, "and stand here, and look at them."
