Keeping a Sunny Disposition

Every year with optimism and forgetfulness I plant sunflowers.  Sunflowers are not to be grown on a whim.  They take up lots of room, shade plants, and suck up water like a sponge.  Have you ever seen a sunflower root?  Some root balls are the size of huge platters.  Yet, these sunny plants are easy to germinate from seed, come in many varieties, and this year, I even got a few volunteers that fell into pots on my deck from seeds that I had the fed birds over the winter.

Now a caution.  My sunflowers rarely get even a foot high before they are eaten by groundhogs and bunnies.  Groundhogs eat them back to the stem on a summer's eve.  Bunnies sample leaves over several days until just the stalk is left.  So, I have learned to plant them in pots on my deck, and this year, my husband generously gave me some space in the vegetable garden which is behind a wire fence.  The sunflower behind his head is actually a foot taller now and not yet in bloom like the one next to it!

Below are sunflowers on my deck.  This summer there has been LOTS of rain and I have had a reprieve from having to water these beauties almost every day on normal summer days.

I have also learned that seeds from these flowers ripen at an uneven pace and the goldfinch show up and eat about a half dozen each day...even from flowers still in bloom.

He comes each day and visits and waits patiently for the crop to come in picking here and there on an outside row while watching my shadow against the window.

Now, for a tidbit of folk wisdom.  "Sleeping with a sunflower under your pillow will permit you to know the truth of any matter."

Putting this under your pillow might interfere with a good night's sleep!

The Saga of the Seeds

I was so excited to be photographing a new flower this summer.  Yes I have had sunflowers bloom in summers past, but this year was such a good variety and I actually got several plants to stand proud and tall across my yard.  (Several meaning sparse, few, scanty, miniscule in numbers.)

 

Yes, they needed my support, but all friends no matter how sunny their dispositions need support on rainy and windy days.  Those heavy heads can be quite droopy once the weight of the seeds kicks in.

I even had a volunteer just appear in a pot on my back deck!  Yes it was a party crasher, but you know some party crashers are always welcome.  Soon it was full of seeds.  And soon the goldfinch, which I RARELY see until the coneflowers seed, were popping by morning and evening.  I could just sit in my living room and watch the floor show!

Once the morning sun was over the tree tops his golden glow was easy to spot even though he tucked himself in the leaves of my moon flower vine which was embracing the dying sunflower.  (I guess that they had had an affair of some sort?)

He really was a beauty and soon made a dent in the seed head.  BUT  it took no time at all for the gray squirrel to also crash this feast.  His manners were despicable and he did not consider sharing.  Faster than the goldfinch can fly away this was the carpet on my deck...

And this was how the remaining flower heads looked!  Egad, it was a frat party.

But I was not filled with dismay...because prior to this disaster, I got the following to warm your spirits as the mornings grow cooler.

The two above I got while experimenting with a ring that I use to turn my lens backwards and convert it to a macro.  Cheaper than buying the macro lens, but VERY difficult to focus and stabilize!

And since there was a party...how about a South American theme?   OLE!

The Eye of the Beholder

This year for some reason my cosmos did not reseed with yellow and orange abundance as it usually does.  This year my zinnias have become rich salad for either that new cute bunny or that fat and dumpy looking groundhog and nothing is left to photograph or cut for bouquets.  I do not know the real thief because they are both sneaky, the bunny is also brave and I was on travel.

My sunflowers 'en masse' look bedraggled and sparse and bug eaten.  The goldfinch visit each afternoon waiting for their meal to ripen.  Therefore, I am left to fiddle with darkness and light and have created these artistic expressions of the beauty that is in the eyes of the beholder of the camera from the few actual blossoms that tower way over my head due to lack of sun.   The photos have been shrunken so that no one steals them without attribution.  I do have my standards.  But they are large enough to be viewed on a computer screen and to share with those who do not have sunflowers.  There must be people somewhere who have as much difficulty as I bringing these sunny faces to the yard?

Optimism vs. Reality

The battle begins every spring with the pillbugs and then with the snails who glean in my small seedling trays that I move into the warm sun.  I speak of those who leave no trace of their arrival except the absence of green where once there was a stem and two leaves opening like clapping hands that gave joy to my heart.

About 40% of little infant plants remain and give a small reward by avoiding the decimation and putting forth secondary leaves and actually looking like living plants with a future.   These I remove as if they were delicate jewels and carefully plant in my flowers beds.  I plant EVERYWHERE, to give as much chance of survival.  I plant in the wet beds, the dry beds, the beds near the house, the beds far from the house.  I spray them with a noxious mixture that would make a grown man faint if he placed his nose near the stem.

But the larger vermin, rabbits or moles or whatever little crunchers, decide to visit and have a late evening snack or early morning breakfast.  Finally, as in real war, which certainly this is, without the treaties or declarations or drones, the groundhogs join the buffet table, and with their usual hog manners, make a mess of everything!!

What on earth am I talking about?  My SUNFLOWERS!  I keep trying to grow sunflowers as if I lived in California or Mexico and not the hurricane and soggy mid-Atlantic.  I grow them because I refuse to accept defeat.  I love their optimistic sunny, open faces.  They are like babies giggling.  They are like sunshine on a cloudy day.  They are like...well you get the idea.

This year I have a bunch of them!  Well, let me go count, because I tend to exaggerate.  I will be right back.  Sigh.  I have 26 plants!!  Well, 27 if you count the volunteer.  As a Master Gardener I can safely say if you plant an annual enough times, it will eventually reseed somewhere!

Some are as large at the crepe myrtle...but no blooms yet.  Did I mention I live in the woods and do not get much sun?

I planted some behind the daylilies...which do not get enough sun!

Some are tucked in beside that famous arbor I posted about a few years ago.  The bird nest in the house is full of  odd and rough twigs.  The Carolina wren is being very weird in nesting behavior with this second batch.  These fledglings will experience tough love.

I planted some close to the house and these are blooming.  Yes, I was hedging my bets and even planted a few in a pot as you can see on the lower right.

Some were planted a little late and are still small.

Most are staked, because we get some real drenching storms.

Here is the volunteer in my herb bed!

And the pollinators have arrived along with the eager goldfinch.

And I have arrived with my eager camera.