Demise of the sunflower

I have been babying a sunflower that I moved out of a hosta plant where it was growing nicely. It was struggling but then started to look quite good. It even produced a flower head which was gradually becoming sunflower seeds. Yesterday when I was cleaning up after dinner I glanced out the window and there it was proudly standing with its small sunflower head. Then thirty seconds later it was gone. I missed the event but something grabbed the flower ripped it off and then ate the maturing sunflower seeds leaving behind the petals about thirty feet away from the now collapsed plant. It has struggled so long to survive and produce that flower but now it gave up and was lying on the ground. I pulled it up and the roots were firmly entrenched as I had thought. It has been a rather interesting saga this past month. A large bird or some animal enjoyed that tasty treat. Fortunately we still have quite a few more sunflowers not quite so close to the ground.

Last night we decided to set up the telescope and look at the comet Neowise. With the naked eye I had seen it a couple of nights ago and the tail was still somewhat visible. The telescope picked it up very nicely and we have a few pictures to remind us. Whilst waiting for the comet to appear, we managed a couple of good pictures of Saturn showing its rings and several moons just above the horizon. Not too bad considering all of the city lights. Amazingly we were back inside just after 9:30 pm. We do not generally do much astronomy these days as the telescope and mount are pretty heavy but all this gardening has built up my muscles for sure and between my daughter and myself we easily set it all up.

COVID-19 still ravaging the world with 17,594,541 confirmed cases world wide (an increase of 273,147 over yesterday), 679,439 deaths (increase of 5,617 over yesterday) and 10,333,166 recovered (increase of 178,140 over yesterday). Here in Canada we have 116,312 confirmed cases, 8,935 deaths and 101,227 recovered. We still weep for our neighbours as they are being dreadfully savaged by this disease. The United States is usually in such control of such items and it is hard to believe that they are so deeply entwined by COVID-19.