The way I wanted to start the gardening bit of this blog was to take photos of flowers within the garden, as they appeared, and then post them on the blog to highlight when they had bloomed and ask folks what they thought they actually were! To be honest I have no idea about the names of most of them! I always find it amusing when real gardeners come over and wander through the garden highlighting the names of everything. By the time they have rattled off ten names I have forgotten all but the last of them. Then I usually refer to the first plant they looked at with the name of the last. Even then I get the name wrong. I am truly destined to be a gardener of note ;-) I am thinking about entering Chelsea next year. The name of my garden will be ‘Garden with stuff in it’. Although I will probably spell stuf (sp?) incorrectly, or at least pronounce it stiff or some such. Trust me, I am going to be on the cover of Gardeners World in no time. No time!
Anyway I missed the boat really. Most of the flowering plants have come and gone, with the notable exception of the hollyhocks. I know the names of these ones so I regularly refer to them in the presence of real gardeners so they think I know what I am talking about. Gardening conversations that I am involved in tend to be heavily influenced by the topic of hollyhocks, the rest is just other stuff right? Well there are paeonies, irises, poppies, roses and some other stuff, to name a few. A sample of some of the flowers in the garden can be seen in the Flickr set I have been adding photos to here
Hollyhocks at the moment are still taking centre stage though, although I think they are coming to the end of the flowering at the moment. Not sure how tall these things are supposed to grow, and if the ones on my garden have been fed steroids or not, but we have some that are well over two metres tall. I would say pushing 3 metres some of them. At one stage I was unable to get through the front door due to the abundance of the beasts! I have never really noticed hollyhocks before, although I am sure that they have existed prior to me attempting to manage this garden! Can anybody clarify this for certain though? To my knowledge I cannot think of seeing a single one in Islington, where we used to live. I guess they must have been there, you just notice different things when they are on your mind
They really are surreal creatures. Over the three months we have lived in the new house they have grown from almost nothing, to over two metres tall. They seem to have an endless amount of flowers if the dead ones on the ground are anything to go by. Seriously picking up discarded flowers seems to be a daily past time at the moment. It's actually a welcome past time so no gripes there. The discarded flowers look as though they don’t come from a plant. The base of them looks like some plastic funky design that you might use to peg your curtains back or something. They also politly curl up so as to not leave any petals behind, unlike those flippin' roses! I tell you cleaning up after roses must be like cleaning up after a small child. Never ending! Again not a gripe, just a fact ;-)
Anyway's there you have it. Hollyhocks can grow to be enormously tall, can block access to your house, drop their flowers like a nicely behaved child, as opposed to the ill behaved roses, and all in all are quite a delight to behold. Just ask the bumble bees who have a tendancy to steal Bono's sunglasses, but more on them later.
Have a fun day
Cheers
m
Hollyhocks in the US grow about 3 metres tall (9feet) if they are in ideal conditions. Children pluck off different sizes of flowers and a bud and stick a toothpick into the bud and put the biggest flower upside down on the toothpick and then smaller flowers and make "dancing ladies"
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