We planted a number of sunflower seedlings this year. A few of them that were planted at the corner of our home got the most sun, and thus grew like crazy. The one that was THE tallest grew to about 9.5-10 feet tall! We had to lash them to long stakes and other things to make sure they didn’t just fall over in windy, wet weather. Especially when all of these lucky sun bathers also produced giant seed heads, that were about a foot in diameter and really heavy.
This first picture is most of the seed head with a small handful of seeds removed for contrast. They grew in such a cool spiral too!
And after I got all of the seeds harvested from this flower, and counted (because… so many! LOL), the number was a little bit more than 1500 seeds. See photo below that somehow doesn’t really capture it, but what can you do.
And…. there are two more seed heads, about the same size, that I have to harvest still.
Also, not to leave them out, the sunflowers that did not get as much sun grew to be 3-4 feet tall, with lovely, smaller flowers on them, which we also appreciated greatly. Huzzah for sunflowers!
This big guy was hanging out in our yard a while back. Apparently it was for a lunch break, as evidenced by the number of remaining feathers strewn about the ground. Still, it was cool to get so close to this hawk – took a while to find out what kind it was – started with my bird book and then proceeded to google. The juveniles look pretty different from the adults. Anyway, haven’t seen him/her since, but we’ll always have this photo – LOL.