Standing Guard

While taking my regular morning walk through the back gardens this morning, I was astounded to see how tall these sunflowers are getting. Every day they seem inches taller. Funny thing is that the package said they'd be getting about 5 feet tall. When G measured last, the tallest was 12 feet high. The flowers also don't look much like the picture that was on the seed packet.

Early this summer I read in our newspaper about the honey bee crisis and it was suggest that one thing gardeners could do would be to plant sunflowers. Next time we were at the home improvement store, I picked up a package. Every last seed germinated within a week of when I poked them into the dirt in a row behind G's zucchini garden.

All I expected was some lovely 5 foot tall yellow sunflowers that I could maybe cut and make flower arrangements. Above is a close up of what I got. Some are yellow, but most are red or dark rust-colored like this close up shows. Gorgeous is the word that comes to my mind when I begin my walk each morning.