Because of the location of our winter bird-and-wildlife feeding stations at the front of the house, it's inevitable that when the season is over, when spring arrives and the necessity to feed wildlife is no longer there, we will find sprouting seeds everywhere in the surrounding gardens.

And the spread is wide, not only in the immediate garden presence, but in the rock garden at the opposite side of the house, in the backyard garden beds, and even in neighbours' gardens adjacent their houses. None have yet complained Last year we had corn growing to maturity (because we felt the stalks were admirably ornamental and left them to mature) in the garden, and one grew on our neighbour's property as well.

This spring, although I pulled out hundreds of sprouted seedlings I decided to keep quite a few of the sunflowers, for their July showy presence. I had stripped the spring garden of multitudes of seedlings and more kept erupting, but finally I felt that the numbers I had left intact would be fine, producing a nice crop of large, colourfully attractive sunflowers. In fact, I'd left in far too many. But even knowing that I left them in place.

And now that they're all mature they're asserting themselves to the point of bullying other plants. The garden beds and borders are crowded with sunflowers in bloom. I intend, as I did last year and the year before, to carefully haul them out of the soil once their flowering phase has concluded, when I will harvest the heads and leave them out for wildlife to feast on. Meanwhile, a few days ago I noticed that one of the flowers, closer to the house, had already some of its seeds missing. I wondered who had been at work, squirrels or birds.

And today I had my answer. Glancing out the glazed front door of the house I saw a goldfinch fly into the garden, perch on the crab tree opposite the very sunflower I'd noticed, then loop over to it to begin pecking at the centre. There's no way of telling whether this very goldfinch was among the many that we fed during the winter, but it's a fair possibility. Its beautifully coloured plumage is a perfect aesthetic foil to the bright yellow of the sunflowers, reflecting the glow of the sun itself.