Okay, so you know by now that I love growing plants of all varieties. but I have my favorites. When i grow them I pay special attention to make sure they get what they need to succeed. Water, fertilizer, the proper ground and weeding so they are not choked out. This is basic growing fundamentals. So what if the plant decides to come up on its own? Don’t worry, this is not some plant horror story, it is as natural as any plant process.
All plants have the potential to produce a seed so they can be propagated. These seeds sometimes fall where the plant gorws. Others are blown by the wind. Some are snatched by birds or other animals and moved away from the area where the original plant thrived. It can make for quite a humorous and interesting sight. When you find evidence of a plant several yards away from the place you know the original started you begin to wonder what happened.
Here are pictures of some of my volunteers for this Spring of 2013.
This one is flanking the driveway where the two wave petunia volunteers at the bottom of the page are growing. This sunflower volunteer is about eight yards from where the sunflowers plants grew last summer.
This one came up near a peony at the corner of our house, opposite the gardens.
This one is closer to our gardens, but in the area reserved for the dahlias.
This one is in the large flower bed next to the treehouse and where the hammock normally hangs.
These are volunteers that came up just feet from where the parent plants grew last summer. I transplanted them together at the edge of the garden as they were spread out in the watermelon patch and I put heavyweight landscape fabric down to limit the weeds in my watermelons.
But sunflowers are not the only volunteers I have this year. Another of my favorites is wave petunias. As I was walking back up the hill from retrieving the mail I noticed these two at the edge of my driveway.
If you have pictures of your volunteers to share with me i would love to see them.
Joe's Musings 
I have a pet cockatoo and put his seed that he does not consume out for the wild birds. I have sunflowers growing everywhere. They look like weeds until they make that gloriously huge flower, then all is right with the world (garden).
I usually collect the spent sunflower heads and use the seeds the next year, but somehow I got busy last year and missed them. No i am dependent on some three or four year old seeds that did not germinate real well. Some of these volunteers are making huge strides and look as though they will deliver some sizable blooms and a good stock for next year.
A few years ago I had a bounty of seeds and planted them really thick. The result was flowers of all sizes, from large to no bigger than the top of a soda can. I would like to try that again.