First Blooms

   After having a few straight weeks of triple-digit daily highs with no rain, we finally started getting some monsoon moisture coming our way in the last few days.  The tallest sunflower in my patch (pictured here on the right) measured 53 inches this morning and during sometime in the afternoon it bloomed and endured a pretty strong rainstorm.  The ground got so wet and the wind must have been blowing strong enough that three of my tallest sunflowers were almost horizontal to the ground.  I propped them up for the photo today. The one on the left was a volunteer plant from seeds scattered from a crop I grew years ago.  The soil in this patch was getting regular moisture, so I've got a lot of volunteer plants.  They usually show much smaller 'seed head' compared to the purpose-grown freshly-harvested seeds for the season.

   When I saw these buds this morning on the Four O'Clock plants in the summer veggies SFG box, I was so excited.  These were supposed to be a multi-color, variegated strain that would have yellow and pink stripes or white and pink stripes, according to the seed packets the seeds came in.  When I was browsing the Burpee Co. web site and looked up this item, I did notice multiple customer feedback stating they got nothing but solid yellows -- no stripes.  I was a bit concerned...

   It was around 7:30 pm that I noticed some bright color in the middle of greens, so I checked it out and saw a solid pink flower. T_T  *sad*  Oh, Burpee, you failed me big time.  I guess I'll have to add my own customer feedback of the disappointed kind on their site.  I have these plants planted in different locations throughout the backyard.

   Among the sunflowers, I have about 6 of them planted also, and the first to bloom today showed a solid white flower... *fail again* T_T  It's still pretty and they smell nice, so that's their saving grace, but I can't say that I'm not disappointed.

   After a couple of disappointment though, here's a healthy flowering kale plant.  I had 6 seeds that I planted in May.  Of the 6, 4 of them successfully transplanted, and they are now at different sizes for some reason.  I used the same compost and peat moss medium for pots and the one in the SFG box is in Mel's Mix.  The one in the SFG box is lugging behind the potted ones.  The one pictured here is growing the fastest.  The raindrops look so pretty on the leaves!! ^^