In The Garden: Sunflowers!

SOMEONE fell off the blogging train!  I'll give you a hint- it was me.  I started my new job, which has been wonderful and also chaotic, and we took a trip to the pacific northwest over the labor day weekend, so I'm just now getting back into the swing of things.  There have been a few new things worth mentioning happening around here,  but lets get to one of my favorites- the sunflowers!

The last time I posted, we had one row of flowers that had popped up.  Here's what the garden looked like at the end of August, before we left on our trip:

The first two rows in buttery yellow bloom, the third row coming in with a deep burgundy color.  Well, then we had a massive thunderstorm and left for neatly a week.  When we returned, the garden looked like this:

Holy mackerel look at that guy on the left... where did that even come from???

It is so tall it is up by our master bedroom window.

Pretty obsessed with the colors on this one.

I've been periodically cutting some and bringing them inside for the vase on our table.  I've also been collecting the seeds once the flowers wilt and the petals fall off- maybe I can grow a new garden of sunflowers next year using the seeds I collected from these!  Wouldn't that be something special?  

This garden has come a long way int he past few months.  I mean, just look where they were in June.  Just little baby sprouts.  And now there's stalks that are 10 feet tall!  It's pretty great, if I do say so myself.  And they make me smile every time I go outside.