Sunflowers today . . .

[Cereusly]

More Sunflowers today and a Carpenter Bee. Cereusly, Tony

[Peterthecactusguy]

Tony, what don't you grow? lol You have little space yet grow tons of different plants. And those sunflowers are cool. We have a few that come up from bird seed. most of them don't do much, since they are zapped, but a few grow flowers. They don't have good seeds tho...

[Cereusly]

. . . Peter, I enjoy trying to grow just about everything. Although many/most times I need to purge plants to make room for something new I want to try. It's amazing how many commercial bird seeds that will germinate, but I wouldn't dwell to long on those! Tony

[Peterthecactusguy]

of course not, they are usually weak and rarely if ever bloom. But I hear ya Tony. I am sort of like you but I like lots of strange plants. funny but a lot of the strange plants I gravitate towards are also toxic. lol For people who haven't seen a Datura in bloom tho, they are pretty and the flowers smell so lovely!

[Cereusly]

Peter, here's a photo of my Datura inoxia in bloom from last summer. Tony

[Peterthecactusguy]

nice. D. inoxia is another name for Datura wrightii I think. It sure looks like my plants anyways. My plants are getting ready to flower this year.

[mg2007]

Sunflowers always remind me of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the resulting flood after the levees broke. Sunflower seeds floated out of the bird feeders and landed via floodwaters on lawns, then sprouted. They were bright spots of beauty amid all the desolation and abandoned houses. Just to make things even more beautiful, they served as hosts for the larvae of the Painted lady butterflies, so there was then an abundance of that species of butterfly! Not very many good memories of that time, but there is that one!

[Eutow_Intermedium]

I always thought that summer was a complete waste of a year. Cant sleep at night , cant eat properly, trees are all the same dull boring shade of green with aphids dropping honeydew everywhere and Mildew growing on that. Grass looks dry, yellow and dead.

Then I grew a sunflower a couple of years back and that that changed everything. Suddenly summer began to make sense after all.

As for painted ladies. In 2010 we had mass invasion in the uk and I was rearing the catterpillars right the way through to Flutterbies. They eat Thistles over here mainly , but I have seen them on Borage. I released one batch from my ( IKEA ) Ingo glass cabinet , and then a week later they came back to my flat and layed eggs on an Onapordum outside my Living Room window. It was crazy.

I have pictures of them , but I think they are only on my Faceburke.

Looked on my FB yesterday and I have 180 or 90 photo albums on there now . Omg !