Hollyhocks are one of our ways of feeling connected to
New Mexico. Four years ago Mars
harvested the seeds with which we started them from plants in the front yard of
our daughter-in-law and son’s house in Santa Fe. We flew back home with the dry, little
kernels safely ensconced in a Ziploc sandwich bag nestled within layers of soft
clothing in her carry-on and scattered them into one of our perennial gardens
at the start of the next planting season.
It turned out
to be the wettest spring in Connecticut since Noah’s flood, and the flowers –
probably because they received more rain in twenty-four hours than they and
their forebears had received accumulatively in the history of the species –
developed “rust”. This was not a good
thing. We, per instructions from the
Internet, tore off all the infected leaves and trashed them. Then it precipitated some more. And we ripped off more leaves. Still more rain. And we pulled out the plants.
They came back
next year – without corrosion – and every annum since.
And, even
though we love them, we don’t make it easy for them. But it is partially their fault. Every year they move a little bit. Which means we can never be totally certain
where they will pop up the next time.
Plus the particular perennial bed where they are looking for space has
several other inhospitable residents – some also from New Mexico – of the
bunch-close-together-and-grab-land school of self-perpetuation.
The good news
is that weeding is never a problem because those invaders that actually get
even a small foothold in the garden are quickly dwarfed and rendered invisible
by the taller, thicker-stemmed, meaner and more stubborn vegetation that we
actually want there.
So the
hollyhocks really have to pick their spots – which they seem to have found two
this year. One pink one is standing a
couple of feet tall on the periphery of one of its former southwestern
cohorts. The other is just starting to
assert itself in a small gap pretty much in medias res.
Hollyhocks
don’t seem to have any good mythological stories – like narcissus or hyacinth
involving the transfer of life or identity from a dying person to a
flower. They do however symbolize
ambition and fecundity (“capable of producing abundance of offspring or new
growth”) – definitely important attributes for any living thing that is
uprooted from its native soil and forced to live in a not totally welcoming
environment.
This is less
true for the sunflowers that are popping up in multiple sites around our
landscape. None of them are the result
of Mars or my efforts – except indirectly.
We supply the seeds to the birds and squirrels that, in turn, propagate
them around our property – an unintended consequence of our desire to surround
ourselves with a feathered as well as a floral framework for our lives. I doubt that any of these so-called
“volunteers” will even come close to photo-worthy prize-winning status - once a
regular feature of late summer local newspapers – but each vibrant yellow flower
head provides another splash of color for our daily viewing pleasure
The open face
of the sunflowers gazes at the sun itself, hence the plant symbolizes warmth
and happiness, adoration and longevity.
Just the type of ingratiating attitude that probably allows the aspiring
plant to insinuate itself into nooks and crannies amidst its less sycophantic
competitors.
Plus many of
the tiny disc florets in the center of the head will mature into seeds
–possibly to be eaten by the same birds that sowed the flower. How much nicer could one plant be?
Our third
successful interloper this year, and another regular, is Queen Anne’s
Lace. This attractive flower (or weed
depending upon your perspective) is by far the easiest of our trio of occupiers
to grow. Just look at any roadside in
the state and you’ll see hundreds of examples of the white-flowered wild
carrots – each one started from one of the multitude of wind-spread seeds. Our preferred growing method is to assume we
are going to have lots of them and then pull out the ones in inconvenient places.
Whence the
name?
“Legend has it that Queen Anne,
the wife of King James I, was challenged by her friends to create lace as
beautiful as a flower. While making the lace, she pricked her finger, and it’s
said that the purple-red flower in the center of Queen Anne’s Lace represents a
droplet of her blood. Also called Wild Carrot (since Queen Anne’s Lace is the
wild progenitor of today’s carrot), Bishop’s Lace or Bird’s Nest (for the
nest-like appearance of the bright white and rounded flower in full bloom), in
the language of flowers, Queen Anne’s Lace represents sanctuary.”
Ambition and
fecundity; happiness, adoration and longevity; sanctuary; color and texture –
all it took was plane ticket, a bag of bird food, and the local air currents.
Who knew landscape
design could be this easy?
