How nice it would be to fly free, like a bird. But they have a tough life too.
Here’s who doesn’t have a tough life.
Story in pictures:
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Can you believe I let the little shit do it? Eat my flowers. Defy me.
I did. I’m a useless gardener, but it’s nice that I grow something someone approves of.
After the last shot, I tapped on the glass window, to no effect. So then I went to the door and Porky waddled off. But only a short way into a nearby bush.
By then, of course there wasn’t much left. Just the stems. Apparently he doesn’t like the Gaillardia or that would be stripped bare too and the daisy seems to be resting at the moment. Pansies also have given up. So what is poor Porky going to do now?
According to my slightly blurred memory, he went to sleep last year mid-September.
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Well. I have some other flowers blooming now.
For one, the hollyhocks finally produced.
They are a bit hesitant, though.
Possibly because the same rotten bugs that chewed on its leaves are also nibbling the flowers.
But if Porky was interested they’d be long gone.
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It was already early Fall when I returned to New York, so the new garden was basically a mystery till last year.
Then, I discovered a row of bushes out by the road.
Using PlantNet, the leaf was identified as a Rose of Sharon.
It was a plant I remembered from long ago.
But those bushes looked very sad and I thought maybe they were badly situated.
I considered moving them. But like most of my plans, this one went on hold.
Which is just as well because suddenly, we have blooms!
Pretty blooms and more in bud!
They look more like hibiscus than the Rose of Sharon I knew before. Mum would approve. She loved her hibiscus.
She had a garden full, in Barbados.
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All of which, my father painted, long ago:
Just six of my mother’s treasured hibiscus. Oh, they were beautiful. The blooms only lasted a single day, with the exception of the aptly named “Two-day Pink”. However, each morning, there were fresh ones.
First thing, which was quite early, my mother would tour the garden with her basket. She would inspect her flowers and make a selection of just the blooms that appealed to her that day.
She put them in the fridge to stay fresh till the afternoon, then late in the day she would retrieve the flowers:
In the kitchen she had thin bamboo sticks that she would insert into the back of each bloom. She had a huge green glass vase that was full of lush leaves and she would proudly display her hibiscus among them and then the vase was sat in a place of prominence. Did I say they were beautiful? Her arrangements were magnificent.
There was nothing my mother loved more than her flowers.
I love Rose of Sharon, also known as Althea, too. They are very easy to grow from seed. Other than their beautiful blooms, another reason that I’m fond of them is that they attract Praying Mantis. When I was a teenager, we used to have one that was on our Althea bush every year. I suppose it hatched from eggs laid the previous summer. I love the way they turn their head to look at you when you talk to them.
I saw a pink one the other day, but I didn’t know I should talk to it. I’ll have to go look for it!
I have never seen a pink one! The ones that are around here are green until they get older, then they are brown. Was it on your Rose of Sharon bush? Try to get a photo of it, please.
It was on some black-eyed Susans, but when I went to look again it had moved on. Will kept a look out. Funnily Grant and I had just been talking about praying mantises. This sort of thing happens all the time!