They were plain yellow ones back then, like miniature suns themselves. We fed the seed heads to the cockatoo, which would sometimes be grateful enough not to bite us, and kept a few back for seeds to plant the next year. They were the only annuals my parents grew, but the most spectacular in the street. A dozen sunflowers beat a whole bed of petunias for true wow factor.

That's even more the case today, with dozens of varieties available from Giant Russian that will give you vast ``first heads" of extraordinary size and magnificence (followed by a few much smaller ``seconds"), each plant growing up to two metres high, to short, shaggy Teddy Bears. There are semi-dwarf sunflowers like Calypso Spray or Dwarf Summer Spray, multi-headed rather than one great climactic bloom, or full-sized multi-headed varieties like Sunflower Orange Spray or Summer Spray.

Nor are sunflowers now plain yellow. Sunflower Sonnet has giant gold petals that turn reddish as they reach the black seed centre. Sunflower Garnet is even more of a show stopper, each massive flower edged with yellow, shading from bright red to a dark burgundy at the centre.

My favourites are Burgundy Spray and Mauve Spray which we kids might never have recognised as sunflowers, with only the slightest hint of yellow on mauve or burgundy flowers. Both produce branch after branch with many heads of flowers.

Sunflowers make superb cut flowers especially those that have been bred to be pollen free. Even the giant heads stand sternly upright, unless they wilt for lack of water and, even then, they often recover with a bit of tending, though the stems may be weirdly twisted.

Any garden can grow sunflowers. You'll get more blooms and longer flowering with fertile soil, feeding, mulching and watering, but even poor soil will give you a few flowers, a bit spindly but still stunning. Plant them at any warm time when you can be fairly sure you'll get another three warm months for them to show their blooming best. If you want them for cut flowers, instead of garden spectacles, look for the newer ``pollen free" varieties, bred for longer life in both the vase and garden.

Plant about 60 cm apart, either in a long row where they can all turn in unison like servants of the sun or in a block of flagrant colour, or just slip in a seed wherever you have a bit of space. The main stem of a sunflower is reasonably slim, so they happily tower above tomatoes, asparagus or anything you think could do with a bit of mid-summer adorning.

Each main stem will give more flowering branches if you snip off the tip when the stem reaches about thirty centimetres, or that is what sunflower experts advise. I've never managed to remember to trim them until they begin to put out their flowers, but as long as you trim off the blooms as soon as the petals fall you should get blooms till late autumn. You'll get far fewer flowers if you leave them till the seeds mature, but if you do you'll entice a display of birds as colourful and a lot more entertaining than the flowers. We make sure we keep some seed heads for the chooks, too. The chooks, in return, provide the manure to scatter every month or so, firstly to give a good strong central leader that can support more and bigger blooms and, later on, to keep more flowers coming.

And no matter how many flowers are on each plant, new or old varieties, they all keep to the old-fashioned tradition of sun watching.

Sneaky snail snatching

If your seedlings vanish overnight, they have probably been a snail's breakfast. Take 30cm lengths of black poly-pipe, all nice and smooth for delicate snail tummies, and place a little snail bait in the middle. Leave the lengths of pipe around the garden. The snails will be attracted by the bait, the smooth surface and the day-time shelter and eat and die within the pipe, thus keeping both the bait and any snails that have just eaten it from birds and other garden inhabitants. If you have a snuffle hound type dog in residence, make the pipe 60cm long so they can't get their noses in it, and use snail baits that dogs find repulsive. See the back of the packet for details.

This week I'm:

* picking broad beans, asparagus, artichokes, avocados, the last of the lilies and other spring luxuries;

* counting the days to the first peach, apricot and mulberries;

* discovering that the snails have been getting the strawberries before we do (this shall cease);

* firmly disciplining the loganberries that have decided they want to sprawl over the vegie garden instead of climbing the trellis;

* envying Virginia's sweet peas and rejoicing in the posy she gave me we managed to get four plants from about twenty seeds (no idea if the ants, bower birds or snails got the others) and only one has begun to bloom; and

* planting more corn and lettuce to give us a continuous crop once the first lot have finished. The lettuce are thickening nicely and the first lettuces of spring should be ready to pick in a week or two, depending on the weather. And possibly the first zucchini too, and loganberry, peaches, cucumbers, silver beet, damson plums, avocados, lemons summer!

Hole food

This is the time to finish the last of the parsnips and carrots before they go to seed and the centres begin to toughen. The chooks, of course, get lavish amounts, but that still leaves lots for us. If you are using home-grown ones from last season, shave off the outer layer, leaving the tough cores, and use more parsnip or carrot to make up for what you can't use.

1 cup self-raising flour
1 cup plain flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup olive oil
4 eggs
cup sour cream
3 cups grated carrots
1 cup walnuts OR flaked almonds

Mix all well and pour into a pan lined with baking paper. Bake at 150C for 45-60 minutes till medium brown and firm on top. Cool in the pan. Drizzle on icing. Keep in a sealed container. It will keep longer in the fridge.

lemon juice
icing sugar (not mixture)

Add juice spoonful by spoonful till it coats the back of the spoon. Drizzle over the cool cake.

Carrot looks better in this recipe, but the parsnip is far superior in taste

2 tbsp butter
1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 carrots, peeled and grated
3 cups self-raising flour
370 ml beer

Sauté carrots and onion in butter till soft. Mix other ingredients quickly and roughly. Don't overmix or it will toughen and not be as light.

Cover a baking tray with baking paper. Divide the dough into two rounds.

Preheat oven till 200C; bake the loaves in the middle of the oven for about 50 minutes, till the loaves are mid-brown and sound hollow when tapped on the base.

These are best eaten fresh and still warm, well buttered, or with cheese.

1 tbsp butter
2 onions, peeled and chopped
4 cloves garlic, ditto
2 litres beef or vegetable stock
1 tbsp red curry paste
4 tbsp sour cream
1 potato, peeled and chopped

Saute onions, parsnips and garlic in the butter till the onions are soft but not coloured. Add the paste, stir on low heat for two minutes. Add stock and potato, simmer till parsnips are soft. Blend till smooth, or mash, which is less smooth but still delicious. Add the cream just before serving.