The nasturtiums (which have been almost forgotten in sunflower one’s time of need) are snaking their way across the patio in two different directions. So much so that another pot reshuffle was required to stop other things from being climbed all over by them. Their seed pods are also getting quite massive and numerous, which is very encouraging for next year’s growth. There are literally hundreds of flowers now, and roughly that number of seed pods.

Given that I started with no more than a couple of dozen seeds and now have this sprawling mass dominating the patio, I think they’ll be in every spare corner next summer!

Here’s an attempted arty shot of all three of the flowers. Some improvement required!

Number two’s flower continues to grow and the petals have pretty much straightened up now.

Nancy decided that she could do a better job of splinting number one using some rather fetching and appropriately green-coloured ribbon, to replace my Heath Robinson lash-up involving part of an old cereal box (left). The results (right) were a distinct improvement, and number one now has (we believe) sufficient support to prevent the head from completely snapping off.

Despite the desperate look about him, number one is a hardly fellow - as you can see by the fact that despite the damage his head is still craning upwards towards the sun. Down, but not out!

And amongst all the excitement number three has also flowered now. Hooray! You can see him as the left-most sunflower in the middle picture.

No pictures yet (I dashed out this morning to water the sunflowers less than 8 minutes before the train was due - it was late anyway so I needn’t've bothered rushing), but battle-scarred number one has yellow bits showing now, and should be flowering in the next couple of days.

Today, number two has flowered! Hooray! Isn’t he lovely?

Sunflower two now has yellow bits showing, which means he is very nearly ready to flower!

In other news, sunflower four has today reached the heady heights of 283cm, which is 9 foot 3 inches in old money. He’s now so tall that I can’t measure him by standing on a chair any more - I had to get a stepladder from the garage! He has grown 40cm in just seven days, which is nearly 7cm per day.

My dad has very kindly given me a dead allium. Now, being given dead flowers by people isn’t generally something to be proud of, but the purpose here is to collect the seeds from it as they fall off and then plant them. This, therefore, is the first confirmed project for Geek Gardener 2005!

The allium flower is fairly crispy already and lots of seeds have fallen off. I am keeping it in the Woolworths bag it was supplied in until next Spring when I will plant them. You can see loads of black seeds still on the flower, with the ones that have already fallen off in a crease in the bag the right-hand side of the picture.

Alliums seem to come in lots of different shapes and sizes, though if I remember correctly, this allium flower was a purple ball about the size of a tennis ball in its prime. Looking around the Internet at pictures, there seem to be dozens of varieties of alliums, and “allium” is Latin for onions! This one is an ornamental (ie. non-edible) variety. I think it is an Allium aflatunense and hopefully mine will look something like these.

It will be a long-term project too, since they don’t seem to do much in the first year, which means that their estimated flowering time will be April 2006. I wonder if I’ll still be weblogging this stuff then?

I have removed the plastic covers from the two buoyant pansy tubs. The third one remains covered in the vain hope that more of them will germinate.

No pictures since they look so similar to the last time they were photographed.

Whilst number four continues to strive towards the Guinness World Record of 7.76 m (25 ft 5 in), number two is the star performer from a looks point-of-view.

Not only is his flower the biggest of the lot (though none of them have opened up yet), but it’s also developed a bonus bud two-thirds of the way up his trunk!

This kind of offsets the earlier bad news about number one.

As promised, here’s a couple of shots of the nasturtiums rampaging their way across the patio. They have grown into and around all their neighbours - to the extent that I have to keep shuffling the fushia in the blue pot a few inches to the left every weekend.

I think it’s fairly clear that a round pot was not the best choice for these lovely things, since the ones in the middle have to fight for light and water and are therefore a bit dog-eared. If I do them next year I think I’ll get some long, thin troughs for them.

Time for another measuring session. Unfortunately Nancy wasn’t around so I had to measure single-handedly - slightly tricky when said activity involves balancing on the aforementioned garden chair and a metal tape-measure that determinedly won’t stay straight. Anyway:

• Sunflower One: 236cm
• Sunflower Two: 228cm
• Sunflower Three: 212cm
• Sunflower Four: 246cm

For those listening in black-and-white, sunflower four is an astonishing (to me at least) eight foot and one inch tall.

I’ve been working late and also been a bit lazy so I’ve not shown recently how the nasturtiums have multiplied.

Here’s a quick dark shot - I’ll get some decent ones at the weekend in the daylight.

The sunflowers’ buds are getting bigger and bigger. I hope they’ll open up within the next couple of weeks.

These shots were taken from the ground, well, from close to the ground: me balancing precariously on one of the garden chairs.