Sun in a Basket

Several dozen little heads and a few big ones, too.  These are going back to
the birds (and the squirrels, chipmunks, deer, ground squirrels and mice).

How much sun, sunshine, sunlight, does it take to make a sunflower? How many hours of powerful energy were absorbed in these many seed heads. From their tiny beginnings as seeds from heads like these, the sprouts became plants and grew from April to September. You do the arithmetic. I'll just stand in awe of the Divine Knowing that manifests here. As sunflowers. As sunshine in a basket.

Birdie Bouquet

Rudbeckia, Camphor Hyssop, Cosmos,  White Boneset, 

Feng Shui says "no."  Dried flowers in bouquets in the house are dead flowers in the house.  Not a good thing.  Outside is a different matter, I'm sure.

When several clumps of Rudbeckia finished their bloom cycle, I remembered the birds--Gold Finches and Lesser Finches--that like to feed on the seeds.  Rather than stuff the unattractive dried foliage and flowers into the yard debris bin, a plan popped into the Things I get to do today.  I'd stake all the seed-food flowers in front of my dining room window.  We would watch the happy flocks settle one bird at a time like the timid flakes of a season's first snow.  They come in the morning for breakfast right about the same time we are having ours.

This morning we noted several other types of spent flowers that the Finches were trying. So why not make a dried flower bouquet of all the seedy sorts in the yard that the birds might enjoy, all in one place--an edible flower arrangement--a Birdie Bouqet.