Hi! Remember my friends who have the tropical garden here at the beach? Well this year their garden has been commandeered by wildly hugely overwhelming volunteer sunflowers!
Seems they did not dead head last year's sunflowers early enough. ALL of the sunflowers in their garden are from last year's seeds.
Now I love sunflowers, so I think it's wonderful. My gardener friends aren't quite so happy, although they do have lovely lilies, a lime tree, a big pot of herbs, and a tiki or two---but no tropicals. Yet.
I love the corners of cool blues, greys, pinks they've added.
This sunflower, I think last year's seed envelope called them Russian Giants, has to be 10 to 12 feet tall and growing madly each day. The stalk is thicker than my arm!
I was interested to see that the sunflower hybrids, the fancies, did not revert to plain, but remain as original. In theory hybrids do not reproduce uniformly.
Miniature ''sunflowers'', black-eyed susans, in reality, grow well here. Exuberant color!
My friend also planted some tropicals for me. So far this is my Elephant Ear. It's more like a Mo ear in size. And my Russian Giants, dwarfed by growing in a deck pot.
Thus year my friend is trying to trim the sunflowers before the seeds start dropping. He had been bringing them to me to dry. I love them, even though the little seed head flowers drop and make a mess. Next winter I'll bring them to the dunes for the little winter birds and rabbits.
Summer at the beach means it's very humid. So I spray a lot of Tilex around every morning. Then I find myself burning pretty scented candles because not everyone loves the aroma, mmmm..., of Clorox, lol.
Have a good rest-of-July! August is almost here, too bad. How about you, are you tired of summer yet?
My summer has just barely begun! I waded in the pool this weekend hooray.
love
lizzy
gone to the beach....
from Kelley, in California, some stunning photos of the huge fire out there. Surreal.
and here at the beach...
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