The Sunflower House at the Children's Museum

The Sunflower House at the Long Island children's museum looks like a fine place to sit and read a little book, maybe even a book titled The Sunflower House about a boy who plants some tall sunflowers in a circle. (If your legs are on the small side, that is).

Or perhaps bump into a ladybug.

At The House Near the Corner with the Sunflowers

I got to briefly meet the people who live in the house near the corner with the Sunflowers this morning. "Love your sunflowers" I said. (I didn't want them to think I was a stalker or on some kind of stakeout.)

Here Comes the Sun...Flower 🎶

....and here comes a pollinator that is definitely not a honeybee.

Hmm. Could it be Euodynerus hidalgo, a species of wasp, seen in the Eastern United States and Canada, according to the folks at bugguide.net? Perhaps. 

Standing in for the Sun on a Cool Gray Summer Morning.

It's almost as if the sunflowers were standing in for the sun earlier on today's unusually cool and grey summer morning. And I guess then the bees were like that daredevil Icarus, only way more successful?

On a Need to Know Basis

Sunflower grown for edible seeds, Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn, early August (4 months ago)

How much you come to know about sunflowers depends on how much you need to know. It's a personal thing really. Do you need to know when it might bloom as an annual for decorative purposes? Do you need to know what the optimal soil temperature is for germination because you want to plant seeds or are you curious about when you can expect to harvest yours because you like to eat sunflower seeds? Care to know what the top sunflower oil producing countries are or where in the United States the most sunflowers are grown? Maybe you'd be satisfied with just knowing what local farmers sell them as greens at the farmers market. Are they annual or perennial, open pollinated or hybrid? Are the ones you buy in a bouquet bred to be pollenless for the cutflower market? Are you curious to know what pesticides were used on the ones raised for oil that made their way into the bag of chips at the bodega and how those chemicals might be effecting bees?

There's an entire world to explore in just sunflowers. How much you come to know about sunflowers depends mostly on how much you need to know and the questions you ask.

Reason to love the late bloomers

Hover fly, perennial sunflower, firecracker vine



Besides that last shot of color before the winter, it's all about the pollinators and making them happy. I see more bees in my garden on my asters in the fall than at any other time in the season, which is why I'm happy I planted them. The bee and flies pictured here around the rose garden at BBG are probably happy about the Perennial Sunflowers and late-blooming salvias too.