Gardening

The Sunflowers

sunflowerseed1

sunflowerseed2

sunflowerseed3

sunflowerseed4

I popped into a Dollar General on the way home from visiting Chris at his field hotel two weekends ago to grab a few goodie package items to send to my niece and nephew. The seed display was promptly placed in the middle of the aisle near the cash register and I could not continue on, I had to stop. No, the seeds weren’t organic and who knows where they were from, but I was so enticed by the super cheap price, somewhere less than $0.50 each for most packets, that I grabbed up a few packages of sunflower seeds, ageratum, celosia and zinnia. I can’t wait for the celosia, my great-grandmother on my dad’s side had several varieties growing outside her back kitchen door and I spent a lot of time when we visited messing with the flowers and watching the seeds float off to the ground.

The sunflower seeds were planted March 3rd and a week later on March 11th they were up, looking like this. Only a week!

I didn’t use the super-awesome macro lens for this, I used my normal reverse macro technique. My brother was lamenting about the trout lily photos earlier this week and I told him it was an easy fix if he wanted to have similar photos. Buy a reverse lens mount and learn how to use it. It works great, you just have to work with the depth of field, holding your breathe so you don’t shake the camera, and figure out light conditions. Oh, and be sure to turn off the camera when switching the lens around so you don’t suck in all the dust and have it on your camera mirror. Then you just have to be sure not to scratch the other side of the lens as it is backwards now. But, really, its is a fun way to get macro shots if you can’t afford a macro lens. We have two mounts (actually there might be three), one for our 50mm and one for the 18-55. I use the 18-55 the most.

The other seeds I planted have also sprouted but I have yet to get their portraits. Soon….soon.

3 Comments

  • chel

    These are amazing! Really amazing since I know how small this *actually* is! And I’m jealous of your seed haul. I’m totally wanting more seeds now… I’m thinking BIGGER, though. I need more fragrant things in my garden.

  • Mom

    I was really hoping that the sunflowers that you and Chris planted last year might have seeded and re-sprouted this year. But so far nothing. 🙁

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