Favorite Plant this week: Helianthus

My favorite plant this week is Helianthus annuus:

aka sunflower

Because how can it not be? These particular ones self-seeded themselves in one of the tubes. I planted some named varieties a few years ago, but I've long since forgotten which ones they're supposed to be.  This year, there are six plants growing. This one is the first to bloom, at about 2 feet tall.

According to Sunset, these annuals need a lot of water. In my garden, they've seeded themselves in the tube with the Opuntia pads, so they're not getting that much water. They're also not staked (lazy gardener!) but seem to hold up alright in our crazy winds. In the fall, the birds like to hang from them to eat the seeds.

They always look so happy!

I'm joining Loree at Danger Garden for her favorite plant meme - although I'm sure I won't be posting weekly! Her favorite plant is always worth a look, and the comments at her blog have more awesome plants to look at here.

Agave Pups

Agave - about 3 years in the ground

Pictured above is my Agave parryi ssp. truncata, planted in the ground about 3 year ago. It's gotten a lot bigger, but when I got it, it was described as "short, fat, blue and producing lots of offspring."  I wanted to have a small patch of these, so I've been looking for pups, but not finding any. As it turns out, I wasn't looking in the right place... As of this spring, there are 6 pups growing:

All the pups - the biggest is maybe 1.5 inches tall.

I was looking near the mother plant - the closest of these pups is almost 1.5 feet away. I'm still excited about having a colony of these - but maybe it will be slightly larger than expected. At least it's happy!