It is the season of the sunflowers. A bright yellow replacement sun as I see it, now that the season is turning to darker and shorter days.
It is a fascinating flower.
Above is the largest sunflower and the first for this season, after a heavy rain, just opening up. Out crawls a wet bee and some bugs. The sunflower just opened about half of its petals to begin with. The others opened up later.
One of the smaller sunflowers in one of the flowerbeds broke in the rain so I brought it indoors and put in a glass.
I put into one of my grandmothers old snaps-glasses. It actually opened up after a couple of days.
All my sunflowers are planted by the birds. The seeds come from the bird-feed and originate either from peeled sunflower seeds or black sunflower seed.
Watch the middle of the sunflower. The pattern of the small flowers that will become the seed eventually. How it swirls… intriguing.
As time passes, the middle of the sunflower shrinks and its pattern gets smaller and smaller.
So, who is pollinating the sunflower? Lots of tiny bugs and flies, and also bumblebees and bees.
Sunflowers can become really tall. My largest is about one meter and 10 centimeter in height, which is not very tall. It grows just beside where the bird-feed is (empty presently), in what I call the wild flowerbed.
The decline has begun. Almost nothing of the middle of the sunflower is now left and it has begun to look very tired.
It is still beautiful in its decline.
A smaller sunflower by the fence is also blooming.
The largest sunflowers is now nodding and has lost most of its petals after the latest heavy rain. Above is how it looked yesterday.The middle of the flowers is now filled. Will all this become sunflower-seeds?
The sunflower by the fence was visited by a bumblebee when I was out taking pictures.
And just beside that one, another one is soon opening up.
I love sunflowers.