Fall Colour

Day 355: I half-expected to see little pockets of frost in the yard when I stepped out onto the back porch and felt the chill in the morning, but if it was there, it eluded my eye. That said, a few things are starting to colour up and seed pods are bursting, ready to be harvested for next year's planting. Autumn is not the end, but rather the beginning of a new gardening season, the time when potential is paramount in the gardener's mind. It is a time of evaluation and planning, identifying what needs lifting, what needs moving, what might go here or there to give shade or to eliminate it. Autumn's advice must be heeded. What worked well? What did not? In pulling out the nasturtiums, I discovered that they had saved my other plants from attack by black aphids. A boon, perhaps? Or in a garden where they had only ever been a problem on marigolds, were they drawn to the nasturtiums, there to breed and lay eggs? Whatever the case, a lesson was learned under Autumn's tutelage. There will be no more nasturtiums for me!

Black Hock

Day 285: Hollyhocks...I think it's possible that this old-fashioned garden plant may have seeded my interest in botany. My grandmother had them in her garden (or more properly, in the alley behind her house), and as much as I loved their towering height and spectacular colours, it was their seed pods which truly fascinated me as a very young child. I'm sure many subsequent generations of Hollyhocks germinated from the seed I picked out one by one to examine, scattering them and a spoor of spent husks on the dry Eastern Washington soil. Their penchant for sticking to my socks and other clothing taught me about seed transport before I understood its significance; I was intrigued by how each seed was locked to the one beside it by the hooks around its outer margins (a similar observation of cockleburs led to George de Mestral's development of Velcro).

My grandmother's 'hocks were all singles and thus became my mental holotype for the genus. No doubles for me! Those ruffly things were an insult to real Hollyhocks, show-offs whose flamboyance couldn't contest with the pure, simple beauty of the traditional flower's open face. When it came time to put them in my own garden, singles were difficult to find in catalogs, but when I did find them, they were only available in black, a bonus as far as I was concerned. They were one of the first plants I put in when I bought my home thirty years ago. I seeded them against the south-facing wall of the house, and there they have continued to provide me with joy on an annual basis.

Hollyhocks In The Forecast

Day 303: When I moved into my home, one of the first plants I wanted to add to my garden was Hollyhocks, the single variety with the saucerlike, open-faced flowers. Seeds weren't easy to find. Seed companies offered doubles in many colors, but singles were a rarity. I would have been willing to settle for any shade (even pink!), but in a stroke of great good fortune, what I found was a black-flowered type. I bought a packet, planted them that first spring, and settled in to wait the two years Hollyhocks require before putting on their first blooms. That was over 25 years ago, and every year, my black Hollyhocks have delighted me, growing somewhat wild and unmanaged (if perhaps not as abundantly as I'd hoped) against the south wall of the house.

Hollyhocks remind me of my grandmother. It was against the wall of her house facing a small-town alley that I first encountered them. Like mine, they were allowed the freedom to do as they would, forming clusters here, a solitary plant there, their bright faces always turned to the sun. But equally, I enjoyed them in the autumn when I would collect their unusual seed pods, cracking off the brittle husks to reveal the ring of "coins" inside. I would try to open them so that the circle of seeds remained intact; not an easy task, and one at which I seldom succeeded. As I gathered these today for sowing next year, my mind swept back to those blithe afternoons and I realized something in hindsight: my clumsy harvesting efforts were no doubt why my grandmother had so many Hollyhocks at the back of her house.

Aunt Hollyhock

Day 273: Single Hollyhocks always remind me of my grandmother, and they're not easy to find these days. Most seed dealers only offer the showier doubles, but in my book, those just won't do. A Hollyhock should be a saucer with a central structure, not a bowl of frills. While searching for singles some years ago, I struck upon a bonus: a black-flowered variety. I love black flowers, so I promptly purchased a packet and planted them beneath my kitchen window. Since that time, a friend has given me more seed, so I can't say for sure whether these are mine or hers. In wanting to portray the richness these plants lend to my garden, I inadvertently captured another "bonus" in the person of an ant hiding deep inside the blossom, a pollinator ensuring future generations of single black Hollyhocks to grace my yard.