Rewilding My Lot

Volunteer sunflowers were a welcome gift to this new and barren lot. I’ve written about them before, here and here.

At the time of writing this (end of August 2023), I’ve had to remove most of the sunflowers to make way for other things that needed to happen. However, one glorious plant remains and stands proudly near the front door. It really did pick the perfect place to grow. Even after several months, it is still producing new flowers, and there are now hundreds of seed heads with food for birds.

The sturdiness of these plants has impressed me. They grow tall in a very short period of time and largely remain stable, even in heavy wind or rain. This one is a giant beside its bed-mates, all planted this year by either me or the builder. Also of note is that the sunflowers have received no supplemental water during this summer’s drought.

The sunflowers that I cut down took some work — the stems are hard and woody. First I hacked them down close to the ground.

Then a few weeks later I dug the stumps out of the ground. Not surprisingly, there’s a long tap root that surely goes deeper than the part I dug up here. The stone marks where ground level was.