Sunflowers!

Last year while weeding (this is seldom done and worthy of note) I vaguely recognized some of the weeds as actual plants, though I had not planted them myself. I puzzled over their identity for a few days until I noticed a similar looking, though far larger, sunflower stalk in the back yard. I had no idea why there were four in my front yard (or one in my back yard) and concluded that the squirrels must have planted some of the seeds my neighbor is always giving them. I decided to encourage their growth and watered them when the mood struck me.  As they blossomed I fell right in love with the huge, cheery faces and really wanted to know what kind they were so I could plant more of them the next year - but you can't ask a squirrel.

And besides that they began tearing the flowers to shreds as soon as the seeds ripened. In a blind panic I managed to channel the pioneer spirit of my ancestors and lopped off the remains of a flower head to dry the seeds. (I let the squirrels have the rest - even though they made a huge mess of them)
This year I started a ridiculous number of them inside and when I tried to harden them off some nasty little bunny came and nibbled them down to nubs. Great. By this time I was on a sunflower trip and had planted about 15 of a larger variety directly into the ground as an experiment in the early spring and thought, as I had nothing to lose, I'd try the same with the shorter ones (I had a ton of seeds, as you can imagine). So I planted about 10 seeds directly into the ground along the front side of my fence and do you know they actually came up? They were glorious and I have often seen random passers-by stop to take pictures with their phones (ok so I only saw one Japanese girl but I figure there were probably more that I missed) Sadly, the squirrels began harvesting before I got any pictures, so the sunflowers pictured are of the larger sunflowers with Isaac and Lillian. Kind of anti-climactic right? Yep. I thought so too. But we take what we get and these are nothing to sneeze at, I think.

The heads are so big that when the seeds start to ripen some of them hang face down. I'm standing directly under this one. (the two black spots are bees, of which we have tons. I'd LOVE to find their honey stash someday.)

Sometimes I can't get them to stand still for pictures, but they cooperated enthusiastically this time!