This was the first year that I have planted sunflowers. I have loved sunflowers my whole life because every year when I would visit my grandpa in Orange City, Iowa, he would have 1 awesome sunflower in front of his garage! It was always so tall and so pretty, so I decided I had to have that too! Darrell & me bought some seeds and tried by planting 3 of them. Well the first issue was that it was warm and then turned cold right after, so we didn’t know if the seeds would have a chance. Then when summer finally started 2 of them started growing, it turned out that the middle one was dug up by an animal and eaten! These 2 sunflowers seemed to thrive and grow (although never as tall as my grandpa’s!) They ended up being so pretty! What I didn’t realize was they really didn’t last very long! They started molting pretty soon afterwards. But I was still excited because I could see all of the sunflower seeds. I had planned to get them out and feed the birds or other animals. Well then we were gone for 5 days, and when we got home Sunday, these next 2 pictures is what I came home to! I was very sad! One had been knocked over and ripped out (either by a storm or an animal) and all the seeds were gone out of this one. The other one was still standing (because we had tied this one up to the windmill), but it looks like some giant mutant animal (or a raccoon??) Grabbed it and took a giant bite out of it!!!!!
