Sunflower Saturday

Every Spring in our backyard, we get a lot of plants randomly growing here and there from the birdseed we throw out every weekend — milo, millet and beautiful sunflowers. I don’t know how it happens (from undigested seeds in bird poo, perhaps?), but we enjoy it a lot. Heavy rains this year have produced a bumper crop of sunflowers, including a couple of massive seven foot tall plants sprouting atop our compost heap. I took some photos last weekend when they were attracting plenty of bees and other flying insects (one of which was caught midflight in the pic below).

In other backyard news, our victory garden is coming along well. We’ve already gotten lots of lettuce which I never anticipated would grow so well in our soil. Carrots and green onions are growing nicely as well. Time to make carrot cookies! We also grew a half row of tomatoes from seeds. I wasn’t expecting much (again, desert ≠ verdant gardening), but the tomato plants have gotten so huge that they’re taking over neighboring crops. Having the garden located in a space that doesn’t get our killer afternoon sun might be helping. At any rate, I’m looking forward to having bunches of tomatoes to go with our lettuce, carrots and onions.