I feel like Mary Lennox
August 26, 2011 @ 4:27 pm | Filed under: Gardening
When my sunflowers were about a foot high, I planted morning glory seeds near the base of each stalk. Now that the sunflowers are spent, I’ve been stripping off their lacy, bug-chewed leaves and watching the morning glories climb. The drooping sunflower heads are heavy with their own seeds; the goldfinches are in heaven. Empty shells litter the earth beneath the green hearts of the morning-glory leaves. When all the sunflower seeds are gone, I’ll remove the dry brown flowerheads and the stalks will disappear behind a curtain of blue trumpets.
This is a tremendous amount of fun to be had for the price of two seed packets.
Related Posts
Comments
5 Reponses | Comments Feed
monica says:
when i first saw your title, it took me a minute to remember the difference between Mary Lennox and ANNE LENNOX. ok, will the child of the 80’s please stand up?
On August 26, 2011 at 4:47 pm
MelanieB says:
Love, love, love. I adore the idea of using the sunflowers as a trellis. I must do this next year. This year we only got one sunflower and it just toppled with a broken stem. We’re loving out morning glories and wish we had more. I also need to plant some sunflowers where we can see then from the house. The bed we have now is around the corner. Though that is the only place that really gets enough sun.
I tried to plant lupines this year and none of them made it. So sad my inner Miss Rumphius was foiled.
On August 26, 2011 at 5:33 pm
kimberlee says:
Oh, lovely lovely! I’ll have to remember that for next year! I currently have (unintentional) lemon cucumbers dangling from my sunflower stalks. 🙂
On August 27, 2011 at 6:31 am
tanita says:
That’s one thing D. and I were talking about this morning on our walk around the village – there really aren’t morning glories around here. There are bindweeds – the relatives that are white and somewhat invasive – and there are trumpet vines, probably, and moonflowers. But not so much the morning glories.
I used to collect the seeds from my parents’ plants and replant them around the neighborhood to see what else I could get. And we loved planting them up the sunflowers, though one year we miscalculated and put them too close to the gourd plants. THAT was small disaster; we had to wield a machete to separate them…
People grow sunflowers here, though; every time I see a line of them I feel like I’m seeing a piece of home…
On August 27, 2011 at 12:52 pm
Rebecca says:
Seriously jealous! The kids and I planted a sunflower house ala Sharon Lovejoy this spring in a similar fashion with one sunflower seed planted alongside a morning glory seed. I planted the Mammoth sunflowers that were supposed to be 6-8 feet tall. Here it is September and our first sunflower bloomed yesterday. The entire plant was about 18 inches tall and one of only three that made it. I think we planted twenty or thirty! Not sure what I did wrong or whether it is just too darn shady here in the woods. We’re going to try again next year. The morning glory vines are growing but there are no blossoms on them. Hmmmpfh.
On September 7, 2011 at 7:43 pm