The east-facing side of the house gets the best afternoon sun, so that is where the sunflowers get their home. A few years back, they were ridiculously tall, as you can see here:
I don't think they will top that height this year, but some of the flowers are already quite tall (also we got a driveway installed in the meanwhile):
Some of the blooms look like the are getting ready to go...
Usually the squirrels and birds get to the blooms before we could even think about harvesting the seeds, but as long as they don't go for my tomatoes or blueberries, that's pretty fine by me. Actually, I'll post another time on the fort knox -style raised beds I've built with the sole purpose of keeping hungry critters out. (and it works!)
Also, the hydrangeas are starting to go into bloom. I had to Google the factoids about the soil pH and the resulting color of hydrangea flowers. It turns out that blue flowers result from acidic soil (pH <5.5). Pink flowers result from neutral to basic soil (pH >6.5). Looks like our blooms are somewhere in-between --not quite blue and not quite pink - and purple blooms result from soil with a pH between 5.5 and 6.5. Also, at this middle ground, it turns out that you could get a plant with some pink and some blue blooms on the same plant. It would be a fun experiment to try to change the pH of the soil just right to get a nice mixture of colors on the same plant.
I reposted this because I screwed up the tags on the original. Forgive me - I'm new here :)
Happy gardening!