I'm Still Here - New Camera on the Way

Wow It's hard to believe it's been almost a month since I posted. I've finally ordered a new camera to replace my old one that bit the dust. I've borrowed a camera in the mean time, but it's just no fun using it and I don't like posting without a photo. I've decided on a Canon Powershot A710 to replace my Nikon Coolpix 950 that I did love despite the fact that it was a 2 megapixel camera and quite old. I should have the new one in about 1o days.

In the mean time, here are some photos of sunflowers. Where I plant my vegetable garden, sunflowers grow wild and I always leave or transplant one or more to act as "poles" for something climbing. Last year I grew Romano pole beans on some sunflowers and this year I grew yardlong beans one sunflower stalk. When the sunflower is a few feet tall I pinch the ends to make it branch to give the beans more places to climb. As the beans grow up the plant I also pull off as many leaves from the sunflower plant as I can without killing it. This is to let more light in. This was my first year growing yard long beans. I didn't like the taste as much as regular string beans, but I did like it enough to grow them again. Each beanpod is about 18 inches long . That makes harvesting go really quickly.
If you click on the photo for a larger image, you can see some of the yardlong beans hanging on the right side of the plant.