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Before they were domesticated all over the world, sunflowers were native to the Prairies. The wild sunflower variety have tiny black seeds that are extremely nutritious. Indigenous Peoples of the plains gathered the seeds to grind them into flour or boil to extract oil. Annora Brown, an avid lover of flowers and nature, described this history of wild sunflowers in her book, Old Man’s Garden (1954). The book recorded stories of the plants in the Oldman River area of Southern Alberta near Brown’s home of Fort McLeod. When making this painting, Brown recalled in a letter that she sketched this scene in person, brought it to her studio to draft, and then returned to the same location to finish, only to find that all the flowers had been cut down. She said, “So there I sat, painting gorgeous yellow flowers without a flower in sight and getting full marks from passers-by for a fertile imagination.”¹ ¹ Annora Brown, from a letter to the University of Alberta (Deep Cove, British Columbia), 1971, unpaginated; quoted in Helen Collinson, Annora Brown Sketches from Life: An exhibition held in celebration of the publication of her autobiography (Ring House Gallery, University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta, 1981), unpaginated.