Visual Escapes and Daily Inspirations: Share Yours

@gingerw Beautiful sunflower . I love the brightness of them . When my husband put the garden to bed for the winter I cut the heads of and laid them on the ground the Bluejays loved them . Do you have bluejays up there ? They are fun to watch fighting over the seeds.

@lioness Yes, we have blue jays and scrub jays aplenty! They are really smart, gotta say! They quickly figured out that while I am constructing my rock feature, it means many rocks lining the fence are being overturned and moved. Voila! instant feast for them to get the bugs and spiders hiding underneath! They now watch to see if I am pulling the rock cart out in the morning, or even my weeding tools. If someone else can do the work of putting a meal on their table, who are they to complain?
Ginger

@johnbishop John the bad news is there are no perennial true sunflowers in Minnesota. The closest would be the cup plant, silphium perfoliatum, I think. But while the plants are tall and strong the flowers are fairly small. Otherwise you can plant a patch of the annual variety and let them self-seed.
Sue

@lioness, How's about: "Imagination"? This looks like fun! Takes me waaaay back to those years of sitting in geography class and whiling away the period with what I called my "dawdlin' doodles". I managed to get promoted to the next grade but never did get the hang of east vs west. Did you use different colors to create this? I think mine were inspired by having map colors at hand...give a girl a diversion and she'll go for it, yes?

@sueinmn I knew there were a few varieties but didn't know the difference. I did find a sawtooth sunflower (Helianthus grosseserratus) that I am considering buying some seeds on Prairie Moon Nursery website (https://www.prairiemoon.com/helianthus-grosseserratus-saw-tooth-sunflower-prairie-moon-nursery.html). The flowers are small and it's more like a tall grass plant which may be nice as a border along the edge of my wooded area. I do like the large sunflowers though and am planning on getting some of those. I wasn't sure if they would reseed themselves.

That is just gorgeous. When my mother-in-law passed away, the preacher asked her two sons what flower reminded them of her? My brother-in-law popped up and said sun flower because she was sunny and bright and people loved seeing her. She and her husband were funeral directors and lived in the funeral home. Since it was a very small town, everyone in town knew them and loved them.

I've never seen the saw-tooth sunflowers before. They really are a delicate sunflower experience.

We had baby sparrows outside our kitchen window. I saw a blue jay trying to get in their house. I opened the curtain and frightened him away. I looked it up on the computer and saw a video of blue jays stealing and eating the baby birds. Oh, it makes me sick even though I know God planned it this way. I always loved them. Our neighbor's beautiful black and white cat was in our yard checking out our birds: he was ready to pounce on one until I opened the window. We have a wooden fence around our yard but animals can get in if they try. We have two shih-tzus--that's the reason for our fence.

@gingerw Yep that's right . Reminded me of when Howard would get the tractor out to mow the lawn and the rototiller for the garden our one chicken was right behind him of what a feast she had the worms and bugs . I love to watch the animals they are so smart and know where a free meal is coming from

@fiesty76 I like that yes I do like to doodle and make different designs . In the art show my son had his son did a geometric design that looked like a star wars picture . He is big into star wars .