Hollyhocks

One of the hollyhock plants that I put next to the back door is doing ridiculously well. It's over six feet tall now, and will get taller as the flowers continue to open up along the stalks. It's not the extra rain we got, as the two that are along the back of the house are only about three feet high, and have much smaller flowers. These ones do get a bit more sun, and the soil they're in has a lot of sand in it. I looked it up, and apparently hollyhocks like sandy soil. So it could be the sand or the sun or a mixture of both. The one next to it isn't quite as tall, but it's still a good five feet or more, so there's something about that location that they like.

And I leave for Colorado tomorrow. There's no taiji camp this year, and while I was disappointed at first, at the moment I'm relieved that I didn't shell out several hundred dollars for it. At the time to reserve it, I would have thought that I had plenty of money for it. Now, er, not so much. The really weird thing is that I feel a heckuvalot freer than I have for quite a while. I'm suddenly looking at things around the house and tucked into the garage and trying to figure out things I could do with them, as I won't be able to spend as much on new items for a while. I'm enjoying the prospect of working on some of those projects again. I might start now, but I have some tidying up to do before leaving tomorrow. I thought I ought to get a picture of the hollyhocks now, in case they get done blooming/blow over/mutate into monsters and crawl away/or whatever while I'm gone.