To celebrate her daughter’s graduation from high school last week, my dear friend Shelley threw a casual garden party. I enjoyed her garden so much that I popped back over yesterday afternoon to take a few pictures to share with you.

Shelley and Isabel call this their sunflower forest. In a sunny patch right off their back porch, tall sunflowers soak up the sun and seem to jostle for a peek in through the windows.

You can see they dwarf Shelley — who, as we were reminiscing last night, joined me 11 years ago on a mule-riding expedition into the Grand Canyon. What a trip that was! Click for my tale of the hair-raising, mule-skinning adventure.

Out front, Shelley has reduced her lawn by carving out space for a patio along the front of the house, where she can sit with her morning coffee and watch the sun come up and say hello to neighbors walking by with their dogs. A single sunflower makes an appearance here too.

The unmortared flagstone path from the front door simply widens into a patio with room for a turquoise bistro table and chairs.

A pretty face-pot planted with trailing sedum is elevated on an overturned pot for prominence.

Here’s another pretty face, Shelley’s cutie-pie Baby.

But on this visit it’s the sunflowers that demand attention. Hey! Hello! they seem to say.

They even make the Death Star seem friendlier.

Shelley said she’s taken video of them swaying in the breeze. I hope she gets more video of birds feasting on their seeds later this summer.

Thanks, Shelley, for sharing your garden with me — and your friendship for the past two decades. Shelley and I were north-central Austin neighbors back in 1995. She and I and four other women on the street all became pregnant that year, and Shelley brought us together, introducing us and turning our casual, neighbor-friendly waves into real friendships. We met monthly for potlucks that continued as babies were born, passed through the terrible twos, and grew into preschoolers. All those first-born babies were girls except for our Aaron.

Over time we moved away, as did some of the other families, but Shelley is still in the house where we commiserated over late-stage pregnancy, our children learned to walk and play, and a half-dozen young families figured out how to parent with the support of friends. Now those babies are all grown up and leaving home. Time marches on, doesn’t it?

All material © 2006-2014 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.