The sunflowers, and what became of them

My sunflowers did a few things I was never expecting, such as blooming multiple flowers on one stem. They looked great and I really wanted to cut them and put them in a vase and paint them. But I only had a few and felt that cutting them would be too mean for my first sunflowers ever. So I let them be and eventually they died of old age.

I thought that the birds would be attracted to them (especially the largest one) but I was wrong. A few times I saw a bird perched on the biggest one, but I never saw any missing seeds from any of the old blooms. Maybe the birds knew something that I did not- that most of the seeds were empty! It's true...after they died I took all the seeds off of them to inspect them. They looked terrific from the outside, but on the inside there was nothing to be found. Out of every 20 seeds or so, 1-2 of them actually had seeds in them. The rest were hollow, and if you pressed each one hard enough, you could "pop" it with your thumb and index finger. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but it was kind of disappointing. Oh well.

I have more sunflower seeds which I'll probably grow and then cut & paint the flowers...however I learned that it's pretty hard to grow them here because I'll have to keep them protected from the evil mystery insect that likes to eat them. I can do that well enough with tulle baggies that I've sewn.

All of the dead sunflowers. Ready for harvest!

Big fat husks- too bad they don't contain anything!

The empty sunflower bloom looks so cool with its strange geometric pattern.