These were growing in a neighbor’s parking strip last summer.

It’s been several years since we had sunflowers in the garden. We planted them one year and they reseeded for a few after that. The fascinating things was that every year they came up a little differently. The first year they were as the packet said. One year they were enormous, like 2 feet in diameter, one per plant. Another year they had several smaller flowers per plant. We never harvested them, but the squirrels and birds loved them. I don’t remember why we planted them in the first place (it was over 20 years ago), it might have been a project for my son. Our garden went Darwinian (a survival of the fittest tangle) for several years. The big winners were potatoes, Egyptian walking onions, mint and parsley. Funny thing was we always got something from it, no matter how neglected.

But this year my husband has tamed it, things are growing in organized rows. But you can still see the parsley, mint, potatoes and walking onions poking up in unexpected places. It is their garden after all!

For Cee’s on the Hunt for Joy.