Hollyhock

 

Readers of the gardening entries on this blog will know that I have an experimental streak in me.  Frequently I get mystery plants coming out of my compost, or remains of some plant that rotted last year that decided to grow this year.

All our pumpkins last year were like that, we didn't know what they were until they started turning orange.  We thought they were just a weird squash (turned out they were small pumpkins), too small for Halloween, but just fine for eating.  We had some really good pumpkin soup, and will be planting pumpkins purposefully this year.

We also have had tomatoes spring up.  It's always interesting to see what you'll get, and I figure, if the plant really wants to try that bad, let it go for it.

Well this year, these things started to grow up, not too far away from where purple pumpkins and okra were planted last year.  The leaves were kind of squash like (see above), and so I decided to just let them grow.  After a while, they were just too bushy to be squashes, so I thought they might be okra, or some okra weird hybrid thing.  It was in the part of the garden I really didn't have plans for yet, so no worries, I just let them grow.

Then it started sprouting all these flower buds, and last week instead of squash or okra looking yellow flowers, we got these pretty pink things.

It turns out they are hollyhocks.  How on earth they got there is an absolute mystery.  There aren't any other hollyhocks around.  Maybe bird droppings, we really don't know.  These things will last years, so I guess it's their new home.  They grow really tall, these ones are over 6 feet tall now.

So, now you know a little about hollyhocks.

My mother reminded me of a favorite painting of hers. "Girl among the hollyhocks". A lovely painting.