This year, just like last year, when the school year finished Sile took home the little sunflower plants which she had raised from seed for her pupils and we stuck them in the garden before we left.

As we drove down through France in July the fields were all full of serried ranks of beaming sunflowers all facing directly and obediently towards the sun, not a single one darting a glance so much as a millimetre to the right or left.

As we drove back, in late August, they were all ready for harvesting, their petals browned or fallen their hearts swollen with oil.

Our Waterford sunflowers were yet to flower when we got back.
They have managed it, well most of them have, in the last week and very beautiful they look.

Now I am quite happy to put the late flowering down to the late planting or our more northern polar position but when I went out to look at them this morning, a beautiful sunny day, I noticed something else unusual about them.
Unlike their French cousins these Irish lads were not looking at the sun.
In fact if you examine the above photo carefully you will see that all of them are looking in different directions.
My theory is that they are far too curious to spend their days looking in one direction, even if that does change as the sun moves across the sky.
Being Irish Sunflowers they would be petrified that they might miss something.
This would explain their extreme lateness in developing because of not absorbing the requisite amounts of ultra violet.
I think I prefer my independent minded sunflowers, but then I am not looking to harvest any oil from them.