My husband, Jim, and I live on a Kansas farmstead at the base of a hill that is covered by a sea of brome grass. Every year, a farmer cuts the hay and bales it for us, usually in late August. It goes like clockwork. But one year, the hay crew arrived about six weeks earlier than usual.

In late June that year, the wild daisies and other wildflowers along our gravel driveway were bursting with blooms. It seemed like a little spot of paradise — the many bright flowers waving in the summer breeze.

But as it happened that year, the hay crew arrived the first week of July, and within a day or two, the entire field of hay, including the wildflowers, was nothing but bare stubble. It made us a bit sad to see the beauty gone so soon, and while we have great respect for the farmers, we regretted they hadn’t been a little tardier that year.

My husband missed the flowers so much that a few weeks later he fired up the old tractor and plowed a country corner of the hayfield, turning under a couple of acres of soil.

As the weeks progressed, he tilled the soil four more times until it was loose and crumbly and would fall apart in your hands. In the fall, he broadcast 30 pounds of purchased wildflower and pollinator-mix seeds.

Our fingers were crossed that his dream of establishing a wildflower field would be a success. The winter months passed slowly while we waited, and finally in late March the field began its reawakening, with little shoots of green appearing here and there.

We scouted the progress daily. As soon as leaves appeared, an app on my phone identified the plants. At first it was mainly cornflowers, flax and poppies. Then more varieties of flowering plants. Within weeks, the field burst into bloom, and the pollinators arrived — you could stand from yards away and hear the buzzing of the bees, and of course watch the butterflies flitting from flower to flower. It was gorgeous even from the nearby roads. Vehicles stopped and people got out to take pictures. A local photographer scheduled photo shoots in our field.

We enjoyed the flowers and hoped they would last all summer, but by early June the blooms were fading.

In an attempt to reclaim the bursts of color, I ordered a pound of giant zinnia seeds and on the day before a predicted heavy rain, I broadcast them across the field. The rain drilled the seeds into the soil, giving them a good start, and within a week zinnia seedlings were popping up all over.

I planted the zinnias for color, not knowing how popular they would be with pollinators. Within a month — by early July — the zinnias were in full bloom, and the field continued attracting a host of bees, butterflies and other insects. To add nourishment to the soil, I also broadcast five pounds of turnip seeds, not knowing they too would produce bright yellow flowers and be popular with pollinators. The zinnias and the turnips, as well as many of the other flowering plants bloomed until frost.

In the peaceful breath of late summer evenings I gathered dried zinnia heads to save the seeds for the next year’s planting.

There were enough dried flowers to loosely fill a five-gallon bucket several times a week. The first autumn I gave a generous quantity of zinnia seeds to a friend who is a bee expert, and the plentiful remainder we stored in the basement. The following June, I broadcast the seeds, even using a leaf blower to scatter them even deeper into the wildflower field. Once again the plants prospered and lasted until first frost.

This has become an ongoing project, and again this year, the zinnia seeds will be broadcast amid the wildflowers. Because I collected so many seeds last summer, we would like to share some with others in our community. My husband and I plan to package 100 envelopes containing zinnia seeds and leave them at a public location in Tonganoxie. Stay tuned, and I’ll post an update as to where that will be.

Obviously, we can’t save the world, but if we plant a seed and watch it grow, there’s got to be something of value there. And maybe that in itself will help on the nights when sleep turns as elusive as a butterfly on a breeze.