Spontaneous Sunflowers

Our house is now hidden by a giant sunflower - and we didn't plant one. When it sprouted in the spring, we were going to pull it out, as we were unsure what it was, but when I noticed that the neighbours had one too, I thought that it couldn't be a weed.

Our garden has been dug up three times in the first year and a half that we've been on Montrose. The last excavation was this spring, when they were installing the new gas meter. All my bulbs and perennials were dug up, so we had no idea what might sprout up this year. Our bulbs were likely in somebody else's garden, along with all the compost that I'd replaced the clay with. They certainly didn't return the compost to my garden. The 7' deep hole had been refilled with clay. I had worked so hard on the garden last year, only to have it dug up again. I kinda gave up and didn't put as much effort into it, because they might just dig it up again. So when this mystery plant sprouted up, I just let it grow.

As it grew taller and taller, I had to wonder: did Dan cash in his retirement savings to buy some magic beans? Was he sucked in by returns which would out-perform the stock market? He doesn't seem like the lottery/dreamer type, but you never know. What else could explain the giant mystery plant in the front garden? Would it ever stop growing?

Finally some flowers formed when the stalk stopped growing at about 7 feet. It is too short to climb. Maybe it is an inversion of the 7 foot hole that was dug in the garden last summer? How symbolic. Or maybe a bird or squirrel dropped the seeds there. Yeah, that's much more likely than the magic bean explanation. Either that or spontaneous sunflowers.