Bee & Hummingbird Garden 6/29/23

56 days. Sue the Sunflower is almost as high as the 5-foot patio fence, and the bloom is starting to open!

Main flower is open now. Sue has skinny petals!

slw, in my ponderings, plants like Sue always evoke a sense of wonderment--all it takes is patience, and eventually your plant will produce a gorgeous, impossibly showy bloom.

Sunflowers grow tall--Sue is at 5-1/2 feet. Do you think that Piper would be jumping high enough to bother bees visiting the flowers?

The Bee & Hummingbird plants seem to be attracting a few butterflies. Sadly, we don't see anything like the numbers of bees and butterflies that we used to.

Here is a photo of the plants in the front patio display box. They are, left to right and top to bottom: giant alba petunia, miniature marigolds, celosia; nicotiana, vanilla cosmos; nasturtiums, persian carpet zinnias, pinwheel zinnias. The second photo is a closeup of the marigolds.





The cosmos, nicotiana, and pinwheel zinnias are a little too tall to be grown comfortably in a Bounty. It could be done, but you get more leaves than flowers. The pinwheel zinnia flowers very quickly--well in advance of all the others--but the flower colors bleach when exposed to full sun every afternoon.

The nasturtium flowers are being eaten by something not human that prefers them to everything else.

Yes, we have a few hummingbirds that are mostly dark green. They were around a lot in June and July, but I haven't seen them recently.

One of them perched briefly on a tomato cage of ours. I was thrilled, because I'd never seen a hummingbird at rest before!