I Love Wildflowers

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๐ŸŒป My sunflowers are finally blooming ๐ŸŒป

๐ŸŒป๐Ÿ’›๐Ÿ–ค The sunflower is native to North America and first was grown as a crop by indigenous tribes over 4,500 years ago.
Native Americans cultivated the sunflower from the original bushy, multi-headed plant to produce a single-stemmed plant bearing a large flower.
The cropโ€™s many uses included milling for flour or meal production to make bread and cakes. Seeds were roasted, cracked and eaten whole, either as a snack or mixed with other grains and nuts and made into a type of granola. ๐Ÿ–ค๐Ÿ’›๐ŸŒป


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๐Ÿ’š๐Ÿ’œ Coleus ๐Ÿ’š๐Ÿ’œ

๐Ÿ’œI got an aero garden last year and the first thing I planted was coleus. Watching it grow was so fun! When it got big enough, I put it in pots on the back deck and it got huge! It was in my greenhouse over the winter when a storm blew the cover off and I didnโ€™t think it survived. So sadโ€ฆ but what can I do? I waited just to make sure it wasnโ€™t coming back, then used the dirt in those pots to plant other things.. and planted marigolds and painted daisies in the pots. Next thing I know.. thereโ€™s coleus growing everywhere! Itโ€™s in my coneflower, the milkweed, my sunflowers, the rose mallow.. even in the asparagus! It dropped seeds everywhere, not just in its own pots, but in pots that were near it too. How exciting!! Now I have tons of coleus growing when at first, I thought it was a goner. Iโ€™ll have to try to collect the seeds from these so next year I can have even more.. after all, thereโ€™s no such thing as too many plants! ๐Ÿ’š


๐Ÿ Weโ€™re Feeding the Bees ๐Ÿ

๐Ÿ’›๐Ÿ–ค๐Ÿ’› The hairy mountain mint is blooming! We already love it because of the minty leaves.. but now we have more flowers for the bees!.. and we LOVE our pollinators. ๐Ÿ’›๐Ÿ–ค๐Ÿ’›

The flowers are very attractive to many kinds of insects, including honeybees, cuckoo bees, leaf-cutting bees, Halictid bees, Halictid cuckoo bees, thread-waisted wasps, the Great Golden Digger Wasp, the Black Grasshopper Wasp, bee wolves, paper wasps, Eumenine wasps, Syrphid flies, bee flies, thick-headed flies, Tachinid flies, butterflies, and skippers. ๐Ÿฆ‹