Yellow at Last!

I have been struggling with sunflowers this whole growing season. We planted our annuals later than we otherwise might have because of all the perennials we wanted to put in. The first batch of sunflowers I planted, already with a late start, became a gift to the birds. Once there were no seedlings left, I decided to start over with a second planting. These have managed to defend themselves from the birds and have been growing steadily the last couple of months, although they don't look anything like everybody else's sunflowers! (It is still neat though to see how dramatically they follow the sun.) When I went up this weekend, they were nearly as tall as me, which seemed like a bit of a growth spurt for them. Then when I checked them today, I saw...


YELLOW! There is actually a flower in there after all. I was quite excited. I'm not holding my breath for a great harvest of flowers or seeds, but I'm still excited to see how much growing they can do before the frost comes. (They are predicting a low of 39 for Wednesday night here, hopefully it won't dip too much lower than that, it is only September still!) But regardless of where they go from here, at least I saw some yellow! :)