Soak up the sun

With the dreary weather we've been having, I thought it might be nice to go back and collect a bunch of the SUNNIER pictures I've taken lately. Or more specifically, those spotlighting one of my favorite flowers in the garden. You can practically feel the solar energy flowing out of this one and gently warming your face.


But how often do you take a moment to REALLY look at a sunflower? And not just see it for the bright yellow petals? Check out the interesting detail with all those seeds.


These three have been sitting in a jar of water on the deck for over a week now, and they still look great.


Looks like maybe they're fighting for attention though...


Heck, sunflowers are just as interesting when viewed from the side.


Here's a close up of one of the volunteers under the bird feeder. Something tells me it won't be too much longer before the birds are enjoying the free snacks!


When you goof and leave the flash on while aiming up at a sunflower, holding the camera in it's shadow, the flash goes off and make the flower appear to really glow!


I think this ones just being coy.


While this one here has a friend...


This here's the largest sunflower in the yard - and looks very different from all the others. Again, they're all volunteers - all of the OOOOOLD seeds I planted intentionally failed to come up (plus they were planted in the shade of the squash and pumpkin plants) - so I'll need to replace them next year. I think this one is bigger across than my outstretched hand...


There's been some discussion lately over at the Gardens at Melissa Majora: A honeybee sanctuary, about whether or not we're seeing many bumblebees in the area lately. I THOUGHT I had, but upon closer inspection I think most of my fat bees are actually carpenter bees. This one, however, looked like a bumblebee to me! (Sorry, he didn't sit around long enough for a close up)


And speaking of bees (and off the topic of sunflowers), this critter seemed to have really gone a little overdosing in the flowers. I found her on a pumpkin leaf, clearly overwhelmed with too much pollen.


She kept trying to clean herself, and then she'd try to fly, wobble around a bit, and then land for more cleaning.



Maybe she just isn't ready to accept she "has a problem" and needs to be hitting the pollen a little less? I don't know if I'm authorized to issue tickets for bees "FUI" (Flying Under the Influence)??