After losing 2 of my 3 tree mallows, I went on quest to find some new ones. I haven’t had any luck so far in finding the Barnsley Tree Mallow, “lavatera barnsley.” I called the nursery where we bought them before but they didn’t have any, maybe the next shipment.

I drove to the west-side Lowes and Walmart yesterday to buy flowers for my garden. I can’t help myself, I find every flower SO BEAUTIFUL! My cart was getting pretty full of flowers so I had to stop or risk injury to the flowers already in the cart. My attention was diverted toward a rack of seeds after hearing a loud, child’s tantrum in that general direction. Oh, I forgot about seeds. It was still early enough in the spring to plant some flowers from seeds. I put 5 packets in my cart.

I pondered a considerable time, though, over one packet. I love sunflowers, my husband doesn’t. I was trying to dream up a scenario in my mind of how this could work out. The tree mallows are expensive. They ran about $25 apiece for a two-gallon container when we bought them from the nursery and they are biennials in our area. I have this empty space now where the mallows were in my garden, along the lattice work on the side of the garage. Really, it is a perfect place for sunflowers as I could tie them up to the lattice. The birds love them and even though they would be in our backyard, people would be able to see them between the houses on the next road over. Big, beautiful, round, bright sunflowers.

So the packet went into the cart. Driving home I started thinking how I would convince my husband this is a good idea. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea. We both loved the tree mallows and he said it was worth the money to buy some more. The tree mallows have class. Sunflowers are a bit straggly looking and it takes 2 months to get a bloom.

After the welcome-home kiss to my husband, I fiddled with the bag of stuff I bought. “Oh,” I said trying not to stutter. “We could save a lot of money by not buying the tree mallows and instead plant these sunflowers.” I blurted it out, not unlike Ralphie in the Christmas Story movie.

He gave me a blank look and took the packet of seeds and looked at it. “It’s not so much that I don’t like sunflowers as it is that they are messy and they’ll keep sprouting up everywhere.” He turned the packet over,”These grow 16 ft high.”

What kind of monster flower had I bought, I didn’t know they grew that big. My garden is about 20 ft by 20 ft tops. “Huh,” I grunted, “16 ft?”

That’s higher than the garage and if I planted them next to our house, we could pick the flowers from the second-story window. Not going to happen….chipmunk food.