Welcome! My mom had a bad fall in March in which she broke both of her feet. She had spent a few weeks in the hospital, and we were transitioning to getting help at home. Her hospitalizations always trigger anxiety for me. Grief is triggered when one feels overwhelmed. I was living with mom because she has MS and is getting older and falls have become more prevalent. Now, she had two broken feet which limited her mobility even more. As I write this, there are cascading health issues for Mom. I am unsure how much time I must serve as caregiver, so I am trying to make the most of our time together and take care of myself. 

I love the sunny and joyful disposition of sunflowers. My mom and I planted a variety of sunflower seeds in pots in April. That way we could put the puts in our windows to get a head start on the growing season which begins June 1st in our Colorado mountain climate. Some seeds did better than others. The Mammoth Sunflower did the best as you can see in the photo above. I could see two unbuilt raised beds of tall sunflowers on her patio in front of the Pike's Peak Mountain view. 

Before our seedlings could be transplanted outside, I bought 2 raised bed kits that needed to be put together which contained a metal raised bed. It measured a height of 32 inches tall and 4 X 8 feet in width and height, but there was no bottom to it. That was fine because we would place it on the patio which provided a flat surface. Then we could fill it with old logs, tree limbs, and yard waste to reduce the amount of soil we would put in the raised bed. 

Then we waited for the right weather conditions. In the Colorado mountains, it could be extremely windy and cold until June 1st. Next, the seedlings were planted and watered. Then we waited to see growth. It was all stem and leaves for a while. To our surprise, we could see the green flower opening up one day and just starting to bloom. Its height was at the level of a first story of our home.