Ōtautahi / Christchurch Daily Photo

I think the bird ornament is a Heron – I rather liked it when I saw it and thought it would go nicely in the wild bit of land I am slowly trying to turn into a garden – albeit a temporary garden as some day the house will be totally renovated. The flowering plants are Agapanthus and I’ve learned quite a few people dislike them and consider them to be a weed. I don’t mind them at all and think they actually work well for the area they are in.

I’ve had mixed success with sunflowers this year. I didn’t think about the direction they would flower in at the bottom of the garden – so my neighbour gets to see more of them than we do! The spring was quite rough on the sunflower seedlings and they’ve just not thrived like they have other years.

These ones are Moulin Rouge sunflowers and you can get multiple flowers on one plant but they don’t seem to last as long as the yellow varieties. Well, it’s been interesting and I’ve got a few new lessons learned about growing sunflowers that I’ll apply this year.