Sunflower Good Morning. You Sure Do Make It Look Like a Sunny Day.

So, the garden is on its last legs, but I'm still getting some things out of it. This weekend I finally decided to try and harvest some sunflower seeds.

The sunflower innards are funky looking.

I had originally planted them because they are beautiful, but also because we feed the birds in our backyard, sunflower seeds and I thought it might relieve us of the cost of a couple of bags of seed.

I probably waited too long to harvest them because, as you can see, the birds got a head start. I guess the seeds are for them anyway, so it's not like I'm mad that they ate them in the Summer as opposed to the Fall or Winter...It's just less work to get them off of their flower head thingies.

Anyway, I did my thing and it took about an hour and half to cut the flowers off of the stalks, get them all together, brush the pollen off of the seeds and then pull the seeds out. Those damn birds better appreciate all of this.

Now, the seeds are drying out and I only have a few more food projects with the garden. I still have to cut up, blanch and freeze the butternut squash and then make some pepperoncini with the banana and Anaheim peppers that are still growing like crazy.

All of this sunflower seed harvesting was lots of fun and everything but the weird, busy, patterns from the flowers and seeds are enough to give me a migraine. They do make for some cool photos, though.