The potted plants fried...

I left the shore side old farm house for about ten days to attend to some business in another state. It wasn't a choice, it was a necessity. Mr was left in charge of the garden maintenance, and he didn't take much charge of anything. He took a vacation, sitting back on his denim laurels for the same ten days. All our potted plants might as well have been fried in the fryers at Mickey D's, considering the condition I found them in, upon my return.  The extra high temperatures of the past week just fried the leaves to the same physical state as potato chips. When I touched the leaves, they just crumbled. There is nothing to save here, it is gone!

I am not a happy camper. I left verdant plants and came home to dead petunias and marigolds, shown here. Sooo disappointing. The green you do see in the photo is Portulaca annuals..they love the heat, and they give great color. They remind me of a Mexican embroidery, with all the color they put out.

  How you can walk past plants that are brown or lying flat, without watering them, I just don't know, especially in consideration of all the work that was put into planting those plants.  When this damage happens you can sometimes get some degree of recovery, but they never grow the same way again. The lack of sustainence somehow damages the food distribution system of the plant and they don't grow as verdantly as they did before they were deprived of water. It is really sad. Its too late to start new, and my dreams of oodles of flowers are not coming true for this year. A complete disappointment, I look forward to this time of the year to soak in the color and feel the teeming life. It is not to be this year. Thanks to this debacle, that bus left without me. It is very painful to depend on somebody to be responsible and to keep the ball rolling, and then they fall short. I am sure that the plants would echo that sentiment if they could talk.


We have a lot of self seeded sunflowers this year.  They are a product of my many bird feeders.

They are all over the garden, and I made the mistake of pulling some of these self seeders out of the garden beds earlier in the season. I am sorry I did. They are a delightful little beam of light in the garden beds, and the birds just love them. That surprises me. I thought that they would wait for the flowers to turn into seeds and then have their feast. That is not what happened. No sooner does the plant flower than the birds are sitting on them having a banquet. Here are some photos to show what I mean. The flower to the right is beautiful except for the petals pulled out by House finches sitting and eating them. At the top of this sunflower in the photo you can see the missing petals at the top of the flower. 

In the photo below and above the fresh sunflower, you can see the remains of the eaten up flower.  All sunflower seeds that were forming in the center of the flower have been consumed by the birds before ripening up. Just goes to show you that you learn something everday, if you take the time to observe what is actually happening around you. As you can see below, this flower is pretty much destroyed from active consumption. One thing I have learned in life is to take things as they come, my intended purpose is not always the ultimate best application for anything....Hey what do I know? I am a human!

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