Every year, we find volunteer sunflowers growing somewhere on our property. The cause is easy to identify: the black oil sunflower seeds (BOSS) that we feed to the poultry and waterfowl get scattered around – sometimes even by wild birds – and those plucky seeds germinate. Seemingly in the blink of an eye, a radiant sunflower appears. And what’s cheerier than a sunflower?

When the volunteer grows late in the season, though, its chances for its seeds to reach maturity become slim. One late summer sunflower, with multiple funky little heads, did manage to produce seeds.

A second one that grew just weeks behind the first (above) succumbed to a killing frost. I found it frozen one morning when the temperatures had plunged overnight. I wish that one had made it to the finish line, too…but know it didn’t worry about the future – it just lived and grew, each day.

In Spring, I’ll plant some low-maintenance, smile-inducing sunflowers intentionally…but I bet a few volunteers will still pop up, too!