Sunday, March 26, 2017

SUNFLOWERS




When I first moved to the Tennessee wilderness I said "This is fantastic! I'll never have to do yard work again!"

Two and a half years later, I'm looking out my window at acres of weeds that are the size of small trees and torrential rains that only bother to cease a few times a month. 
I don't need a lawnmower or a gallon of weed killer. I need tractors, plows, and about a dozen able-bodied field hands.

I had initially wanted to cultivate an impressive garden but the sloping, impossibly hilly terrain has thwarted my plans - - not to mention the jungle of Mega Weeds (capitalized for emphasis).


 The photo on the right was taken when I first moved here, before the invasion of the monster weeds

Yesterday afternoon, during a heroic surge of rare energy, I crawled out onto the back porch and planted some sunflowers. It was a modest gesture in appreciation of the arrival of spring - and I might plant some more innocuous things next week.
If I can find a few more inches of level ground. 

An aside:
While I was crawling and planting, there was a sporadic barrage of gunfire in the forest behind my house, which lasted about half an hour (I stayed low just in case of stray bullets). Eventually the blasts moved farther away and dwindled.
Hunters? Or soused hillbillies with idle hours to kill? Heck if I know. 

I used to enjoy growing sunflowers when I lived in West Texas because it was a perfect climate for them. 




All the sunflowers on this post are ones that I grew in West Texas.

 

Here I am catering to the Texas sunflowers.

Note:
I initially wrote a different blog post for today, but when I tried to publish it the page wouldn't load and it was eventually lost forever. I've been having numerous frustrating problems with Blogger lately.

My other blog:
http://cabinetofcurioustreasures.blogspot.com 
  

28 comments:

  1. Jon, I've read reports from a couple other bloggers about posting and commenting problems lately. Google's probably improving the hell out of something again. Too bad you lost a whole post! I enjoyed this one though because I really like sunflowers --they have such personality. As for gunfire, maybe the neighbors have given up on regular weed abatement and taken to shooting them down. Be careful out there.

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    1. For the past few weeks I've been having lots of problems with Blogger - including comments and posting. I don't think I can survive many more improvements....
      As for weeds, it would take dynamite to blast mine into submission.

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  2. Sunflowers are such a happy flower. They make me smile and they feed the birds.

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    1. Sunflowers are definitely a happy flower. They're easy to grow, they look festive, and I like the seeds as much as the birds do.

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  3. I'm not especially fond of flower-flowers (e.g., roses), but the sunflowers are pretty darn irresistible. Who can resist smiling back?

    Speaking of smiling ... you look pretty darn happy in that last photo. That's nice to see.

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    1. Sunflowers are always happy. I'm happy on rare occasions....

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  4. A sunflower farmer you were. Very impressive blooms. do you harvest the seeds to eat or plant?

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    1. I like to eat the seeds - but I most often save them to plant (and feed the birds).

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  5. We have lots of the small sunflowers around here but I've tried to grow the large ones and can't get them to grow. Yours look nice.

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    1. I think the tallest ones I ever grew were about five feet. Most of them are smaller.

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  6. Jon,

    There are people, who must never leave the city, who constantly harp how we mere mortals will destroy nature. Nature would very much overgrow us and destroy us if we aren't careful. When I moved to this house there was nice privacy hedge of varied bushes about the backyard. Now it is a constant war to keep the bushes at bay and I keep losing.

    Larry

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    1. You're right, Larry. Nature is much too powerful and resilient to be eradicated by people.

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  7. Hi Jon. Love sunflowers. Is it level ground beyond your porch? If it is sloping there, what's to stop your planting up there, maybe in steps/terraces? Reclaim what is yours! Loved the swathes of untended but thriving Bougainville along the Californian freeways when I was there. On reflection maybe all that digging would be hard on your back. MaggieB


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    1. My entire property is on a slope. The previous owners left numerous remnants of a garden - - so there is hope. But I think I'd need a tractor....or a miracle. My bad back is one of the reasons that I can't do much around here.

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  8. I'm all in where sunflowers are concerned ... I just love them. One of the things I look forward to each year is being among fields of varying sunflowers in different colors, shapes and sizes. My friend has a huge acreage with gardens galore and one section is completely dedicated to her love of sunflowers.

    Your sloped terrain has different possibilities if you wished to have gardens. It would take some planning depending on what would work the best, and what veg and fruit you'd like to grow. I can see fruit trees at the bottom ( to catch water ) then terrace the ground and grow in raised vegetable plots which keep the soil in place.

    The land has potential .... and sunflowers is a very nice start :)

    ReplyDelete
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    1. There are definitely a lot of possibilities here - and perhaps I'll eventually try to tackle some. The climate is great for growing, especially since it rains so much. I hated arid Texas - where it only rained a few times a year (at the most).
      I'd love to have a field of sunflowers!

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  9. I imagine your sunflowers will thrive. I've had them grow and bloom in the gravel beneath my bird feeders so they are definitely hardy. Violas are very easy keepers and reproduce with no assistance. They come in a wide variety of colors and produce interesting color combinations when they cross pollinate. They survive our winters here in Alaska and show up in the darndest places, i.e. the cracks between paver stones.

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    1. One of the best things about sunflowers is that they're easy to care for. I'll have to try violas - - I didn't know anything about them.

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  10. Sunflowers are fun. That's the last flower that my Joe grew for me and it was a beauty it stood about 7 ft tall and had a span of about 13 inches diameter...right outside our window so when I sat by the window I could enjoy the beauty....:)

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    1. Wow, 7 feet is definitely a tall one! I'm sure that flower really had a special meaning for you. What a nice surprise to hear from you Sandi - - we go back a looong time. Thanks for keeping in touch.

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  11. Your sunflowers were gorgeous. Were they all dwarf plants? I had the super tall variety years ago, but the heads were so heavy, they bowed the stems. Then the birds ate all the seeds. (They were verrrry happy!)

    Those sloped areas would work well with phlox or some other flowering ground cover.

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    1. I think most of my sunflowers were the dwarf variety. I had some that did get about five feet tall. I don't know much about phlox but I looked it up and learned that it has 67 species. Impressive!

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  12. Spring is coming Jon! I love sunflowers but they don't do well for me here in southern Delaware. Please keep us updated with photos of your backyard "garden." One of the reasons I moved from Pennsylvania was that we lived on the side of a hillside. I was always walking on a slop. Where I live now nice flat land without rocks. I love it!
    Ron

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  13. The ONLY thing that I liked about Texas was the fact that the land is flat. It's extremely annoying to live on a slope/hill/mountain.
    The weather has finally warmed up - but the rain seldom stops.

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  14. Perhaps you you should look into a Rent A Goat business, they will have the place cleaned up in no time at all.

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    1. Ha! I thought about getting some goats - - but I heard about someone who had them. The goats turned out to be very picky in their eating habits. They only ate the GOOD plants and completely ignored the weeds.....

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  15. I have finally figured out that gardening is manual labor, and I am not well equipped for manual labor. Now interviews for the farm-hands, that would be more my style.

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    1. I definitely prefer to observe manual labor rather than to do it.

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