Late bloomers

This year has been a great year for all the flowers that populate our garden. They’ve all been magnificent and were a tribute to years of hard work by Evelyne (I never did much in the past in that particular “department”.) Now, as most of them have faded it’s our splendid hollyhocks turn(Alcea); these flowering plants in the mallow family Malvaceae are native to southwest and central Asia. For us, they're short-lived perennial plants growing to up to 10 foot tall, with broad, rounded leaves and plenty of pink, yellow or even dark flowers. Our hollyhocks are very drought-resistant, and do extremely well in full sun locations that might be too hot or dry for other plants; we don’t water them at all and this summer was particularly dry with just four of five hour of rain since our last snowfall on June 15...