sunset flowers

It's hardly a spectacular sunset this evening: there's a storm slowly rolling up from somewhere in the south of the state, and so the sky is grey and hazy.  But the sunflowers, nonetheless, are bright in the gloom.  We hope they're still here tomorrow ... one of the nearby roads had its verges mutilated by the mowing machine today, which coped with grass well enough, but when it came to chamisa bushes in its way, clearly didn't have a sharp blade.  The poor things are mangled and split and churned up.  Last year the mowers did an exquisitely delicate job, lifting their mechanical scythe over every single little blooming wildflower, so this was horticultural callousness was rather a shock.