Flamingo Farming Update

I have received many inquiries over the past several weeks regarding the progress of our sunflower growing efforts at the Hope Springs Eternal Bamboo and Sunflower Farm.  And by "many inquiries" I of course mean the one time Shelya, in passing, said to me, "So something ate your sunflowers?" After the rabbits (my mom's theory) or the armadillos (Flamingo Joe's theory) nibbled their way through the sunflower plot, we pretty much ignored the garden until Joe finally had to mow it this weekend.
 

Note the utter dearth of sunflower plants.  Oh wait, here's one:

I think.  I'm really not sure, actually.  But there are three other plants identical to this one randomly placed where the rows of sunflowers were originally planted, so I'm assuming these are sunflower plants.  It is possible that the vicious roving gangs of pointy-teethed bunnies or armadillos who ate our original plants had eaten some other plants before getting to our plot and then, you know, pooped out some seeds from those other plants and now those plants have blossomed, but that scenario seems a smidge far-fetched even for me, the woman who thinks her children are going to grow up to be productive members of society.

Jamie and Jason also planted some baby's breath when the original garden went in.  It's possible that this is the only plant that survived:

But I'm leaning toward calling this one a weed.  I'll give it another week or so to see if it flowers and if it doesn't, I'll wait another month and let Flamingo Joe mow it down.

The picture above is just to prove to you that I can, in fact, grow flowers in my yard.  Ignore the weeds in the foreground.  I was going to take a picture of that bed from the front, but the weeds growing immediately in front prevented me from getting a clear shot.

But in other news of the flora at Casa Flamingo, our bamboo is flourishing due to the fact that bamboo is extremely difficult to kill and not a staple in the dietary needs of rabbits or armadillos.  And since we set our pandas free in the spring, the bamboo has no natural predators in our yard.  Do you remember this itsy bitsy stick of bamboo?

And this giant hole that we made our then-three year old dig (slave labor is actually encouraged when it's your own children you're enslaving)?

Well, here are the fruits of our three year old's labor, one year later:

Not bad, right?  That's about a year and three months' worth of growth.  Here's another clump that we planted the year or so before:

I really hope Flamingo Joe is remembering exactly what each of these varieties is called because that's probably key in running a successful bamboo farm.  Your customers rather expect you to know whether you are growing a faregesia denudata or a borinda albocerea, whatever those are.

Regardless, we have a few more years before we'll be able to quit our regular jobs and live off the earnings of our bamboo and sunflower farm.  That should give us enough time to figure out what we're actually growing.