And so it begins. Last night was the first big sunflower picking of the year. Our living room was bedecked in funeral parlor style as piles of flowers covered every available space. Of course we can't just bunch them into bouquets, we have to strip off all the leaves first. That's the part where a nice long movie like Lord of the Rings or Ben-hur comes in handy. If you can watch a movie, it kind of breaks up the monotony of pulling leaves off the stems one by one. We were up until 2:00 in the morning stripping leaves last night, but looks like we'll have plenty of bouquets to put on the stand this week.
This year the flowers are at optimum picking height; about waist high. Some years they end up six feet tall with stems like tree trunks. We fondly (or perhaps rather unfondly) refer to those patches as Mirkwood. Even worse, however, are the very dry years when we end up with dwarfed flowers. It's never fun picking flowers less than knee high!
Per usual, even though we staggered the plantings by several weeks, there appear to be four patches all coming on at the same time. I guess that's to be expected, they generally do that every year. The weather is usually the cause. All rain one minute and all sun the next tends to stunt one patch and start another off like a rocket. Oh well, there's not much prettier than a patch of sunflowers all blooming at once, even if it does make for a large flush of flowers at one time.
While I was out amidst the yellow heads unfurling their golden petals to the sky, I couldn't resist popping off a few heads for my pan of silica crystal. Sunflowers keep their color when dried and their chunky bodies make them loads of fun to work with on wreaths. And unlike the fresh flowers, dried heads don't make you all sticky!
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