Hollyhocks

When I came out of the hair salon today I saw a pink hollyhock growing in the corner of parking lot. The salon is in an old house in an old Springfield neighborhood and it makes sense that hollyhocks would be growing in this area, since they are kind of an old-fashioned flower. It was nice to see this pink flowering plant growing up in such a relatively desolate place.

When I was a child, we kids spent a week or two with my grandparents, my mother's folks, on the farm near LaHarpe, Illinois where she and her sister grew up. For entertainment, my sister and I made hollyhock dolls.

It's easy to make a hollyhock doll: You pick a blooming hollyhock, whatever color you like, and use it for the skirt of the doll, then you pick a bud and use it for the head. These are fun to play with and twirl around.

Frank Lloyd Wright designed a house in Los Angeles using the hollyhock motif, called (oddly enough) Hollyhock House. According to the website, "The house takes its name from the favorite flower of Aline Barnsdall. At her request, hollyhocks were incorporated into the decorative program of the house, and stylized representations of the flower may be found on the roofline, walls, columns planters and furnishings."
It's open to the public and I would love to see it some day.