Last year I had several volunteer sunflowers seeded by the birds or squirrels in my yard. So this year when I saw these plants sprouting I thought more sunflowers. I even transplanted two of them to the vegetable garden because I thought they'd look nice against the fence. (Big mistake!) The one below appeared next to the house where sunflower seeds had been scattered during our big snow storms.
Below are sunflowers from my daughter's garden. There is some resemblance, don't you think?
I realized something was amiss when no flowers appeared, but I thought maybe it's a later variety. After visiting my daughter in NH and seeing hers in bloom I became even more suspicious of these plants. The clincher was when I spotted some along the roadside this past weekend. Trash trees! Oh, no! What had I done?
Today they all came out from their various locations. The roots were mighty, but I pulled them out with the help of a shovel.
The stems were hollow like bamboo.
Does anyone know what these trash trees are?
I pulled up all the basil in the vegetable garden and picked the good leaves off of the plants. I have two plants left in the herb garden which I will leave until the frost gets to them.
I washed the leaves in the prep sink then ...
... put them in the salad spinner.
I coarsely chopped them in the food processor adding some olive oil to coat the leaves and ...
then put it all into one ziploc bag which I flattened as much as I could. This went into the freezer flat. 
When I need some basil this winter I'll open the bag and break off a bit to use. How easy!
