Sunflowers At The Summer Solstice

The longest day of the year was this past Monday. Sure, it’s the first day of summer, but the summer solstice also signals that the days hence begin to get shorter, shrinking a bit each day and making fall seem like it gets here all the more faster.

As you may know I’ve had a cam set up and both webcasting and archiving images snapped every 10 minutes of the sunflowers we planted in Coyote Corner on June 7 and now have growing. As of this morning a righteous 85 seeds of the 100 planted have sprouted.

I’m pleasantly surprised by such a high-percentage of plants because Coyote Corner is not an entirely ideal place for a sunflower seedling to be. The plot only scores a few hours of direct sunlight each day and that’s somewhat filtered by the neighboring trees that shade the plot.

But anyway, from the accumulated images I’ve excerpted the sunflowers’ full day on June 21, literally via a snap about every 30 minutes from dawn to dark. I would suggest slowing the sequence down by advancing the frames with your arrow key (if that functionality’s available via your computer). It’s fun to see how much the sunflowers move over the course of a day.

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Will

Will Campbell arrived in town via the maternity ward at Good Sam Hospital way back in OneNineSixFour and has never stopped calling Los Angeles home. Presently he lives in Silver Lake with his wife Susan, their cat Rocky, dogs Terra and Hazel, and a red-eared slider turtle named Mater. Blogging since 2001, Will's web endeavors extend back to 1995 with laonstage.com, a comprehensive theater site that was well received but ever-short on capital (or a business model). The pinnacle of his online success (which speaks volumes) arrived in 1997, when much to his surprise, a hobby site he'd built called VisuaL.A. was named "best website" in Los Angeles magazine's annual "Best of L.A." issue. He enjoys experiencing (and writing about) pretty much anything creative, explorational and/or adventurous, loves his ebike, is a better tennis player than he is horr golfer, and a lover of all creatures great and small -- emphasis on "all."