Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Sunflowers and rainy days

The summer high pressure systems are breaking down over western Europe, letting the Atlantic weather fronts dip down into France. This is the autumn and winter pattern taking hold. And it brings us rain.

The tall sunflowers we planted this year behind the sweet corn are now in full bloom.

In this transition period between summer and fall, we get nice weather for a few days, then a cold front brings clouds and rain. Grape growers have to be thinking and testing and planning for when to roll out the harvesters. Home gardeners have to watch their tomatoes and get them in before too much water causes them to split open.

The tallest sunflowers in our vegetable garden are starting to dry out and produce seeds. There are still some smaller sunflowers that are just about to bloom. They're very late, but it's been that kind of year. We're starting to pull in the bulk of the tomato crop now. And yesterday I noticed that we have a decent crop of jalapeño peppers among all the peppers we planted.

6 comments:

  1. You know, I eyeballed some beautiful late-summer sunflowers just yesterday down the street. And thought how pretty they were. And what time of year they represent. And, then, the rainstorm to beat all rainstorms happened later yesterday afternoon.....

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  2. Beautiful sunflowers. Like A Lewis, I thought about buying some and planting them; however, we're in the middle of a drought, so I decided not. Lovely photo. :)

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  3. I miss growing sunflowers probably as much as I miss growing tomatoes. They are such lovely flowers.

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  4. I sometimes wonder whether ever year is a strange year in the garden. Don't know the answer to that, but this one was very different here in Ohio. We've had an abundance of tomatoes, but peppers are not happy campers. Love your sunflowers.

    We're having a lot of beautiful butterflies just now. And some of the same spiders you photographed so beautifully.

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  5. alewis, lucky you got to see them when you did. Did the rain bat them down?

    writer, I do think they like a good amount of water.

    michael, you'd think with all the sun you get...

    kristi, I think you're right; every year is different. We've different results with different things over the years.

    vtt, there are a lot of them here!

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