My fetish for Sunflowers

I have been known for my fetish for sunflowers for some years now. I started growing them about 10 years ago and this year is the first time I have grown them for about 5 years. About 8 years ago I grew a really great crop of sunflowers. They were planted in our front yard and were enormous... some as big as basketballs. Unfortunately a lot of them were either destroyed or stolen by passers by who, like me, took a liking to them and had to have them for themselves. It was quite frustrating really - because of the size of them they were actually quite hard to break off so people would try to steal them in the night and couldn't break the stems so I'd come out the next morning to find another poor sunflower drooping miserably.

Well... this is my latest lot. Alan and Spencer actually planted the seeds and Spencer really enjoyed watching the seeds sprout and slowly grow into little baby plants. Once the flowers go to seed I will collect the seeds and save them for next year in the hope that the next crop from that group of seeds will be even bigger.

Try staring at the centre of the second sunflower... after a few seconds the centre starts to spiral - I just love that every flower is different yet still kind of the same.