It's 'fess up time.

I was kind of hoping that everyone had forgotten about our sunflower competition. And then Kim had to go and bring it up again.

Unfortunately, the whole thing was a complete shambles. In the end we agreed that E., our eldest daughter, had won as hers (pictured left) was the only one that had a flower on it - albeit disfigured and dead. However, we decided that we wouldn't offer a prize this year - and that had nothing to do with me not winning - because we had all failed pretty dismally.

What happened? Well...while we were fairly optimistic that the pot sizes were large enough to house a single sunflower, we were sadly mistaken. This caused two problems. The first was that the roots consumed most of the space in the container and would then drink any water as soon as it was added and thirsted for more. A few hot days in a row and they were wilting beyond recovery.

The second problem was also related to the pot. The taller they grew, the more top heavy they became and as soon as we were hit with a few strong winds they were pushed over ripping their escaping roots out of the soil beneath the pot.

So, our sunflower competition became a null and void affair.

While we were all a little disappointed we have vowed to attempt our competition again next spring and I will keep you updated.

P.S. My sunflower was one of the first to go down and until the autopsy report comes back I'm not willing to rule out foul play.