Attack of the mutant flora

We compost. All the peach peeling, egg shells, asparagus stems, and other rot-worthy stuff, we toss in

an enamel bucket on the back deck and every few days I take it outside the back fence and dump it into the composter situated under our pear tree.

Each fall we take compost as dark as chewing tobacco and spread it over the garden. The pile usually gets warm enough during the decomposition process to kill most seeds, but every now and then seeds make it through.

We didn't think winter would ever end. Spring was slow in coming but once it arrived, growing things thrived.

We planted sunflowers, but we had one that volunteered (that's what my grandmother called it) to come up a few rows away. 

It finally bloomed this week and I snapped this photograph of my great nephew Jordan standing beside it. Jordan is almost four feet tall so you can look at this picture and do the math yourself.

I've never seen one quite this tall. The flower is as big as a dinner plate. Too bad an heirloom tomato seed didn't survive and grow a tomato as big as a beachball :)