“This is huge, it’s taller than the garage!”

The plant in question was a sunflower. And it was, in fact, taller than the garage. What started as a pack of seeds I had gotten for 50% off at a local garden store and just tossed into a bare spot of my garden was now the first thing people noticed.

The sunflower variety was not an ornamental variety, like the ones I had growing in my other flower beds. This one is called Mammoth Grey Striped sunflower and from the name I should have guessed that it would be huge! But it’s hard to imagine what an eight- to ten-foot-tall plant looks like from one tiny seed. The Mammoth Grey Striped sunflower is an heirloom variety that produces a single flower on one stalk. Mind you, it is a single flower that can be up to 14 inches!

As the sunflower grew, I

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