Yesterday afternoon a photo enthusiast with a new digital camera knocked on our door to ask permission to take photos of the sunflowers in our garden.

I was pleased the sunflowers had an admirer and after talking with her for a few minutes, I realized that maybe our sunflowers were more unusual than I first thought.

Last year my husband planted a few sunflowers and had great success with them. And they were a great and inexpensive way to supplement the chicken feed (it always goes back to the chickens at our house). So this year's garden planning included a larger area dedicated to sunflowers.

Fino is the green thumb in the family so I can't take any credit. He diligently mixed chicken manure (which is high in the nitrogen the plant needs) with the sunflower's soil a few times in the spring and summer. The result was the biggest sunflowers we've ever grown.

So the girls and I took the digital camera out after dinner to document - and appreciate - a gardening job well done.

G. is five feet tall so we estimated our sunflowers to be about 7 feet tall.