Roughly 21 Days Of Sunflowers in 110 Seconds

This incessantly slimy wet weather Los Angeles has been suffering with these last few days finally got me nostalgic enough for summer this weekend to battle my balky computer until I finally was able to get the above timelapse uploaded to YouTube.

This is the last of four timelapse sequences recorded continuously between June 7 and September 1 of the section of our frontyard we call “Coyote Corner” (which was once thickly overgrown and harbored a den for a pair of coyotes). I planted 100 sunflower seeds on June 7 and then proceeded to record their growth over the following three months (consisting of pictures taken every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day).

I won’t trouble you with the first three even-less-compelling segments, only this one covering August 9 through September 1, the interval just prior to blooming to when I pulled up the squirrel-ravaged flowers and returned Coyote Corner to its empty state. Next year, we’ll plant pumpkins here.

Though 80% of the seeds sprouted, I never got the percentage of blooms I’d been hoping for (thanks to the predominately shady location and the marauding squirrels). So instead what I like most about this timelapse is the cyclical sense of the earth’s motion one gets as each day and night races around past the lens. It’s kind of like the flowers are on this planet-sized merry-go-round, which I guess we all are.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy the ride, too.

PS. That unreadable sign in the foreground reads “The Earth Laughs In Flowers.” I wanted to write in “The Earth Says ‘Fuck The Laughter’ With Squirrels.”

And for anyone interested, the set-up involved in these timelapse was decidedly low-tech. An old DV camera plugged in to an older G3 Powerbook kept under the porch, using Evocam software.