If you’ve kept up with my blog at all over the couple of years I’ve been cluttering up the internet with minutia, you already know that I love deer. I have a whole page devoted to my deer posts, I spend a lot of time running for my camera and trying to capture the image of these beautiful creatures in a digital file.
However, if you’ve been keeping up, you also know I love my gardens, and rejoice in the surprises they offer me, like the recent volunteer sunflowers, for example.
We’ve never been able to grow sunflowers here before because of the critters. I’ve been running outside with my camera and shooting the progress of the sole sunflower bloom so far.
Can you guess where this post is headed?
This morning I was greeted by sunflower stalks with leafless stems poking out.
And it didn’t take a lot of detective work to figure out who did it.
I think I should just make this point perfectly clear to the four-legged creatures dining in our garden — you’re not the only ones who like the sunflowers. Leave something for the rest of us.
So far so good. The buds and blooms are still intact.
However, I am not going to be a happy camper if I wake up one morning to find them missing.
Christine M. Grote 
I love garden “volunteers.” You never know what will come up. Not so fond of deer; they even ate rhubarb leaves which are poisonous. I guess they’re immune.
Yes. I love the surprises. At least the good surprises. I didn’t know that about rhubarb leaves.
Sweet post… love the photos. It seems to me your writing style is “coming back to life too” ~ like the humor and “lightness” I feel in it. Love you, Carol
Thanks for stopping by Carol. I’m really up and down here. Somedays I am light and full of life and energy, and the very next day I can be completely down in the dumps and almost immobile. I’ve never experienced anything like this.
Hope you are doing well. Good luck with your move.
Don’t you just love volunteers? I had a volunteer sunflower last year and it came back again this year…I’m so excited!
I was wondering about that — if we let them go all the way until they drop their seeds, maybe they’ll be back. We’ll see.
I had to laugh because I know first hand what you mean. I planted “deer resistant” flowers this year but somehow, the deer didn’t get the memo that they don’t like those plants. 🙂
Ha. They’re pretty incorrigible. I still love watching them.
I have a volunteer sunflower this year! Just took a picture of it this morning. Thankfully, I don’t have deer to nibble on it.
Did you post it? I’ll have to stop over. I’m thinking about trying to grow them in a pot on my deck next year.
I feel your pain. Our volunteer sunflowers met a similar fate last year. And the year before that, I think.
Well, so far the flowers are still standing, minus a few leaves. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
The deer are thinking, “who, us?”
It’ll be awhile before our sunflowers bloom.
I heard a lot of that from my son when he was growing up.
Or more like, “It wasn’t me.”