lehua_mc's photostream  

This is a cardoon flower head that I cut from the plant sometime in early September, after the primary flowering, but before I thought the seeds had matured. Then it sat in the dry shade of my entry, basically forgotten, until I remembered to add it to my growing bouquet of seed heads. Then one evening a parachute-r landed on the table next to me, and I noticed this two month old cut flower head pushing out its seed to populate the soil. Alas, it is currently only a soft pile near my butter knife.

A professional job certainly! My boarders between turf paths and garden beds are gravel, dug deep enough to accomadate a wine bottle anyway, so why not add a few? These got some extra pounding by a rubber mallet, a process which ensured they wouldn't be quite as uniform as the jeweled mound at Sampson and Beasley, but certainly a functional sippy cup for the critters.

The transient feathered crew have discovered my annual crop of elephant head amaranth, their forage a joy to my heart.

These are the cardoon seed head that I decided to harvest before the rains came, just as delicate as a mohair sweater, no? The spiny outer layer was softened at this juncture in late September, so easy to sluff off, revealing the still bound parachutes.