Time to chop

The hollyhocks are done. See, there’s one lone pink one up at the top and the rest have all finished blooming and gone to seed. The leaves are all rusty and nasty looking.

Remember what it looked like before?

Now there’s a big bare spot, but maybe the liatris that I found under the hollyhock can have half a chance to grow. It’s survival of the fittest in the front bed. The amur maple was leaning on the hollyhock, and the hollyhock was shoving the Russian Sage out of the bed, so now equilibrium has been restored.

What remains of the giant hollyhock.

And speaking of giants, the common mullein grew 8 feet tall this summer. That doesn’t bode well for the coming winter. If local lore is to be believed, as the mullein grows, so goes the snow. Deer browse the tips of mullein during heavy snowfalls in the mountains and plains so the mullein must grow tall enough to stand above the winter’s snow. Actually we got blasted with snow this past winter and last year’s mullein only got about four feet tall. So much for that old folktale.

Here’s the mullein – the giant spire to the right of the arch. The finches picked all the seeds off the top, so like leftovers at the dinner table, I got rid of it.

Speaking of dinner, I finally got a tomato. Doesn’t look like I’ll have many more so I’m darned proud of this one. Especially considering I don’t really remember watering it more than a few times. It has those dark splits at the top but there’s enough juicy tomato below so that a BLT is on the menu for tonight. Time to slice.

Then and Now....Shade and Sun

Now...
I love Lavatera. This one is in the back yard and I can't remember its name. I call it Pretty Pink Eye (not cunjunctivitis). It's from the mallow family, which also includes Rose of Sharon, hibiscus, and hollyhocks. You know I love hollyhocks.
Then...
July 2006. Do you see a giant hollyhock? I don’t either. There is a little wimpy one barely visible in front of the purple liatris. It had been attempting to bloom for a long time in the shade of an overgrown upright juniper.

Then...

A month earlier I'd had the juniper taken out. The bare dirt shows how much area it took up. And it was taller than the house.

Now....

The hollyhock took full advantage, wouldn't you say?

Then...

See the feverfew in July 2006? (the white clump behind the geese). You can’t see the pink lavatera but it’s visible in the second picture above, at the front edge of the bed, seeking one of the few sunny spots the juniper didn't hog.

Now...
Look at the lavatera this year. It spread back into the feverfew because….there's sun. (The purple verbena didn't magically appear, I yanked out last year's Yellow Archangel -nasty stuff- and planted Homestead Purple this spring).

It was fun to compare pictures from last year to this year. I also solved a mystery. Every time I look out the living room window I wonder what the funny looking clump of grass is under the giant hollyhock this year. After viewing these photos I see that it's last year's purple Liatris clearly visible in the second photo. Good thing the camera remembers, I sure don't.

Green light, glowing flowers

Do you get those late afternoons when the setting sun’s rays seem to cast a green glow over everything? It reminds me of photos people take while scuba diving (not me) when they aim the camera up through the green depths toward the sun. There must be a name for it but I don’t know what it is. Actually, when I mention this to people, no one knows what I’m talking about so it may be early signs of glaucoma, but it sure is ethereal-looking. Anyway, we had an evening like that last night, after a blistering 100 degree day. The colors of the flowers were pretty much glowing so I took some photos of my giant hollyhock.

This hollyhock was a spindly creature for years, (yes they self-sow everywhere) growing in the shadow of an enormous upright juniper. The overgrown juniper dwarfed the house, and tried to lay claim to the driveway space too, and when I could no longer get the car in the garage without scraping the sides, the tree man came and took the juniper out. I should have done it years ago. Now there's a baby flame maple there, which isn't big enough to cast much shade.

The hollyhock breathed an almost audible sigh of relief, sucked up all the sunshine, and decided to reach for the sky. This year it’s 7 to 8 feet tall with the girth of a mighty oak. My neighbor was over the other day, did a double-take and said "what the hell's that giant thing?" as if I had surreptitiously planted it under cover of night. Really, it's hard to miss.

Half the fun of hollyhocks is seeing what color they will be when they bloom each year. It’s never the same in my garden. Most of them (planted years ago as a mix of white, pink and red) turn out a deep maroon color which I’m not crazy about, but my brother-in-law in the desert thinks they’re fabulous. I always hope for pink, and a cherry pink as long as I’m hoping. Hoping and wishing seemed to pay off this year.

Another stand across the yard shows definite apricot tones, with a few white ones thrown in.

These remind me of the flowers we used to make in school when Sister wasn't looking. We used a couple of pieces of kleenex, though I don't think we had apricot-colored tissue back then.

In the back yard, this hollyhock obligingly self-sowed in just the right spot. Ooh, cherry pink! In the next few weeks, the leaves will be full of holes (earwigs and such) and rust will take over. I'll cut them down to the ground and a fresh green rosette of leaves will soon appear and there will be a second blooming, but nowhere near as glorious as the first.

This evening, no green glow and the temperature plummeted to 80 today so I could get serious about prying the weeds out of the cracks in the driveway. This job requires my favorite gardening tool - the kneeler. A beer helps give me a bit of a glow too.

A LITTLE HELP FROM A "FRIEND"

This time of year my hollyhocks are in their second or third re-flowering. Their stalks aren't as thick and tall as the first time around and so they tend to flop over. That's the way I feel too. It's been a long season and most plants are going to have to fend for themselves now until the frost does them in. Next spring, when the sap rises and I've regained my own fervor, I'll be cleaning up the garden and planting like mad. Right now I'm too tired to stake floppy plants, re-seed the patches of grass where the weeds have taken over, or do much more than the occasional watering. At this time of year one of the pests of the front beds makes it appearance in spades, the volunteer morning glory. I hate these little buggers with their twining tendrils trying to strangle everything in sight. They remind me of the strangler figs I've seen in Mexico that encase the "host" plant and eventually do it in. Perhaps if these morning glories were "Heavenly Blue" like their ancestor many seasons ago I'd think they were a happy accident, but they're in that mauve shade that I hate in the garden. Normally I attempt to un-weave their twining tendrils from the plants next to them, which is kind of like trying to untangle a fine-chain necklace that's gotten itself into a knot. And if I just yank them by their roots all the rose heads will come off too. So I was pleased to find a morning glory actually doing a service in the garden. It wrapped a tendril around a hollyhock stalk thereby keeping it off the ground. Of course it looks rather like a stranglehold but it will do for the time being.