Day Four: Unexpected Bit of Beauty-Brown-Eyed Susans of the Sand

A flower I remember my grandmother pointing out on our woodland hikes was the Brown-eyed Susan. I often wondered why Susan got her own flower named after her, so it was memorable. Today I saw a new variety of them, growing in the dunes, just like back home, only on a vine along the ground. They were side by side with what I call begonias; which were also growing wild and abundantly, all over the dune.

Brown-eyed Susans evoke marvelous memories from childhood. My grama was the one who took us on outings to places our parents did not take four children, so often it was my sister and I having some "just us" time with her. They were not frequent, but memorable, yes. We hiked in nature preserves, the park with the creek through the middle where we spotted craw-dads, docks down on the Mississippi to hunt for clam shells, which we found incredible with their shine and their very marine-lifeness. Growing up land-locked, I had an odd fascination for all things aquatic, and these sand dune flowers linked past and present, land and sea in a lovely way.