the experiment is over

It began in a wave of optimism a mere three (or was it four?) months ago. Hang on, that's not right. I actually thought they would all die, or be eaten, or disappear without trace or simply not appear at all.

We did the best we could. We fed and watered them, we cared for them, we gave them canes to lean upon when they were weak and frail. We encouraged them. N danced for them.

But this week, the realisation that a pesky squirrel was climbing up them trying to eat their seeds led us to call it a day and put the viable sunflowers into a vase, prune the rest into the dustbin and wait to see whether anything will rise up, phoenix-like (okay, we didn't actually burn anything), from the enriched soil next year. (The soil of the pots - the earth in the flower beds proved toxic to seeds as the samples planted there all fell into the 'simply not appear at all' category.)

Overall, a fairly rubbish year for sunflowers - mainly, I feel, due to a conspicuous lack of sunshine in the summer and an over abundance of pot flooding from torrential rain. Nevertheless, we managed to grow about three or four feet of sunflower about seven times over. The packet of seeds suggested six to nine feet - maybe in sunnier climes, like Kent.

It was a good year, however, for Mr Grass-Head who is going from strength to strength. No photograph this evening, mainly because it's dark now - but partly because I felt that N should appear herself on this page, clutching one of her flowers.