Summer Blooms

Most of my outdoor perennial blooms are long since gone now, so it's probably a good time to showcase some of them here.  Also, this year I opted to try out an annual arrangement in my north flower bed.  Enjoy some visuals below:

My half barrel container in its full glory!

One of my deluxe lilies.

A surprise mammoth sunflower bloom!

There were 4 of these that came up in total.

Stargazers in the ground.

Stargazer up close.

Some alyssum and ageratum.

Another stargazer variety in my kitchen.

Sneaky Sunflowers

In the fall of 2013 I planted hundreds of bulbs around the shed.  Most of them were eaten by a family of voles the following spring.  I tried everything to ward off those pesky voles.  I couldn't get them to stop eating my precious bulbs and seeds.  I think they finally left once all the edibles were eaten.  In other words, only my daffodils and muscari survived.  Actually, I did have about a half dozen dutch irises come up this year - much to my delightful surprise!  And it seems the voles didn't quite take to the lilies, which I am so ecstatic about, because they were the priciest of all!  But on to the namesake of this post...

After it became clear my hard work with bulb selection and placement was all in vain, I decided to try a much less expensive option for summer time blooms, albeit annuals.  I figured that sunflower seeds were small so maybe the voles wouldn't notice them.  WRONG.  Every place I had planted a seed, the next morning there was a void where the voles had burrowed and eaten the sunflower seeds... or so I thought!

To my surprise, I was going around trimming back my daffodils last month when I noticed an odd weed.  Upon closer inspection I discovered it was no weed at all, but four of my precious sunflowers coming up!  I have no idea which ones they are, I had planted a variety pack and a couple red ones and mammoths.  If I had to guess I'd say the taller one is a mammoth, but we won't know until they open!  It may be a coincidence that they are all located in this little spot, I'm not sure what I had planted there last year that shielded them from the voles.  Or maybe these came up only because they are on the south side of the shed.  Regardless, I am totally pumped about them and hope to get some plantable seeds from them for next year!

June 20th

July 4th

Surprise Sunflowers!

Evidently some seeds fell out of the sunflowers I had on my stoop this summer and into the pot of soil, which I have been reusing as extra fill in some of my propagations this winter.  In like 3 days, sprouts shot up out of the prayer plant pot to a height (and with a growth rate) that removed any doubt about the sprouts being new prayers popping up.

I don't expect these sunflowers to last long, as there is probably not nearly enough sun for them these next few months.  Frankly, I don't know what ignited their growth in the first place - perhaps just adding water woke them up?  I'd have thought they'd require some sort of dormant time after growth, but maybe the water, sun and (indoor) temperature threw off the growth cycle.  One of the three sprouts has already shriveled up, for the remaining two it is only a matter of time.