Sunflowers

For the past couple years, I have walked around my neighborhood up and down the alleys and saw the most beautiful sunflowers in other people's backyards. And I said to myself, "I'm going to have sunflowers this summer, too."

In May, I cleared out a strip of land between our fence and driveway. It's a 16-inch wide strip that was overgrown with grass. I dug out all the grass and created a flower bed that was a couple inches lower than the surface of the driveway. I planted a row of sunflowers there. I chose a variety of sunflower seeds. Some are the small brownish red ones that have multiple flowers on each stalk. And I planted some giant ones that grow to over 8 feet tall.

The first flowers have started to bloom now: