Flower power

I have not been posting as regularly as I like but all the sunshine makes my upstairs office too hot and I avoid it like the plague....

Today I'm up early and it's nice and cool so here it goes.

I was and still am trying to make an English garden. I tried it at my old house in Britannia Beach, B.C. and I'm trying to achieve this type of garden here in Powell River. Every English garden must have, in my opinion, hollyhocks. I was just starting to garden and for some reason could not for the life of me find any hollyhocks. Of course at that time starting the flower from seed never entered my mind. I was looking in nurseries for the actual plant...unsuccessfully. So to the Internet I went and through my searches I found the Canadian Gardening Forum and became an avid reader.

The forum hosts several topics and one of them is a seed exchange. I read through all the topics, followed the conversations, never having the courage to participate, learned so much about gardening, and finally there it was, the topic I was most interested in...hollyhock seeds...free for the taking. But could I really start anything from seeds? Not sure but I was willing to give it a go. I sent a self stamped envelope to an Ontario gardener and a few weeks later I had my precious hollyhock seeds. I purchased some seed starting soil, a cell pack, and planted my seeds, and watered, hovered, watered, and hovered over my seeds, looking for a sign of life, and then, there they were, hollyhock sprouts. I was thrilled. Out into the garden they went.

We sold the Britannia Beach house before I could see the flowers but I quickly got more seeds started when we moved to Powell River. I hope the hollyhocks thrived at my old house because they sure thrive here. So much so that I'm now finding little plants everywhere, all over the veggie garden, all over my flower gardens....all from some seeds from Ontario....

I spied some beautiful red hollyhocks just down the road from me...I may have to knock on the door and ask for some seeds....