My first sunflower for the season bloomed the day before Christmas.

The wind made the petals a bit flappy for the picture, unfortunately.

Goodbye dear sunflowers

I realised that I'd been at the art school too long the other day when I rationalised to my neighbour that I was retaining the blackened and aphid-infested giant sunflowers in my front yard as "a reminder of my own morbidity."  It was in part true; however, there were a few other reasons why I left it 'til today - council green waste day - to remove the majestic creatures.

tied up with string on the nature strip [sob]

Firstly, I was so proud of them - most grew bigger than me, and they fed bees with their pollen, then birds with their seeds (the birds would sit on top and swing upside down), then aphids, and by consequence, ladybirds.  It seemed a waste to remove them while the leaves were still green, despite the fact that the flowers - the reason for planting them - were black.  They also created some height in a garden that is filled with low (albeit growing) plants. 

 Frontyard sans sunflowers.  It looks so bare!

I'm also ashamed to say that it had a little bit to do with the neighbour.  He's nice, but he and his wife are the type that has a perfectly manicured yard, with hedges that have not a leaf out of place and cut with the assistance of a spirit measure, a weedless lawn, and grey painted concrete.  He also has the unfortunate habit of giving me business cards of the local mowing company every time my grass dares to grow beyond 2cm high.   As a result, when he suggested to me that it might be time to remove my sunflowers because the flowers were dead, I told him that I liked them like that, and that I had no intention of removing them.  I also added that I liked the way that the aphids were attracting ladybirds to my garden. 

In all reality, I'm not a annoying neighbour.  For a Y-gen I'm pretty quiet - I don't listen to loud music until 4 in the morning, throw weekly parties, or let the weeds grow higher than my sunflowers; however, I take a rather organic approach to gardening and don't mind if I have natives mixed with cottage garden plants, or if trees grow larger than expected, or plants sprout in the wrong place.  Letting the sunflowers live out their natural cycle was just an extension of this gardening philosophy.

in their prime (RIP)

I look forward to planting them again next spring.  They're certainly amazing (even if ephemeral) additions to a garden.

Sunflower-Guzzling Bees

 

My sunflowers are out and happy.  Happier still are the multiple bumblebees that seem to be constantly attached to the sunflower 'faces'.

Here's an 'update' frontyard shot:

 

 

I also have to share my finally flowering sweetpeas.  Only two plants out of the entire packet actually sprouted (ripped off!).  They tried to climb some dead flower stalks at first, and I had to unwrap their tiny tendrils and curl them around some wire which I hung on my front fence (in the laziest of fashions).

Then there's the lavender that my mum planted from a cutting when she came down from Sydney a couple of months ago.  She introduced me to the world of stealing stalks of other people's plants.  Who would've thought cutting a chunk of lavender, sticking the end in honey, and then sticking it in the earth would yield a brand new plant?! Brilliant.  When she planted the stalk, it was a mere twig.  Now it has branches and flowers...

Lastly, is my 50c Chickenfeed seed garden, which is in the small planter box built into the house at the top of the front stairs. I wouldn't have thought seeds from Chickenfeed would actually grow, but at 50c I thought it was worth finding out.  I picked the 'blue mix'.  It turns out that the Chickenfeed seeds were much much more effective than the expensive sweetpeas. 

Front Garden update

I've been interstate for the Xmas break, so I've had a bit of a blogging hiatus, but I thought I should post the developments of my front garden.  I had been doing a vegie garden course, so most of my posts have been on the backyard which is the 'practical' garden, whereas the front garden is my flower/ornamental garden (for now anyway).  Apparently the previous owners had a system where the husband had the backyard, which was all produce, and the wife had the front, which was all flowers and pretty.  I'm trying to do both.

Here are photos of the front yard at the time that signed the contract for the house (late August '09):

And just before I went interstate for Xmas (mid December '09):

And this afternoon (it was very very hot in Hobart!):

 

Those big things in the front centre are my giant sunflowers, which I'm very proud of.  I should point out that I was wrong about the transplanting, as here are the sunflowers that were looking very sad in my last pessimistic post:

I'm thinking sunflowers don't like being transplanted...

I planted a number of sunflower seeds in the front yard recently as an 'instant' plant to fill some of the space in the front yard, and they've been coming up really well in the areas where I shifted the soil significantly, such as the circles in the middle.

However, none of the sunflowers planted in the strip along the front of the house have sprouted, and I think it has something to do with the quality of the soil.  Instead of taking the hint and mulching, I decided just to 'transplant' some of the sunflower plants from one of the circles to the bad soil strip. 

Before transplantation:

One day after transplantation:

Lesson learned.  Tomorrow I'm going to head to the nursery to pick up some mushroom compost for the front yard.