I didn’t plant this & dont recall seeing anything quite like it in the neighborhood. Some kind of aster, possibly woodland sunflower? Hard to narrow it down from what I’m seeing online. It’s not quite a foot high & seems like it struggled to get to this point (we’ve had lower rainfall this year).
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Guess what, guess what! The hollyhocks that had all their flowers and buds removed by squirrels, have grown lots more buds and flowers!
I had thought it was all over for them. We’ve had drought and a couple of heat waves, too. But just look at all those buds now! I don’t actually expect the squirrels to let them all stay and flower, but even this much perks me up and renews my faith in…something.
(It was sunny when I saw them earlier—just gorgeous!—but it got a bit cloudy before I got back out there with my phone.)
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I suppose it could! I’d heard of that but didn’t otherwise know much about it. Due to the ongoing drought (unusual for here) there’s not much left of it now. (But we finally got some decent rainfall, so we’ll see what it does now)
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Late season flush from a stump in our front yard! 
ETA: now that I’m cooking these i really wanted to add some context. No banana for scale, but:
These guys are monsters!!
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The colorful varieties covered halfway through this report make me want to try Sunflower Steve’s seeds next year:
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I’ve grown a deep purple maroon variety before. They were beautiful. I wanted to plant the seeds and see what happened because they were mixed in with several varieties of yellow sunflowers. But the birbs and squirrels ate almost all of them and the few I collected mysteriously disappeared over the winter.
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First freeze of the season tonight, so my tropicals have to come in: ginger (l) and lemon grass (r)
The ginger started as a small piece from the grocery store that sprouted. It is close to filling the pot.
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Careful with that. It will spread like wildfire and conquer pretty much any territory. (At least here in the 6b Shenandoah Valley)
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Interesting, it grows ok here in the southern UK, but definitely not one of the ones I see outside of gardens.
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I’ve been moving the lemon grass in and out with the temperature roller coaster. It’s been uncomfortably damp cold this week, so I parked it in the garage, thinking it would go mostly dormant in the chilly perpetual twilight. Nope, it sent up flower spikes and set seed.
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How it started:
One little sprouted ginger root piece from the grocery store, September 2022
How it grew:
A full pot, slightly sunburned, October 2023
Current condition:
It went dormant as soon as I brought it inside for cold protection, January 2024
Now what?
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Make ginger beer?
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Get 12 more pots and start again!
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@NukeML LOL, I’m barely keeping my sourdough starter going. Brewing anything more than a cup of tea is beyond me.
@atteSmythe Definitely will be replanting some! I don’t have room inside for winter protection for all of it though 
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ginger freezes well. i grow ginger and galngal. when it comes in, i wash and freeze most of it and make something yummy with the fresh.
when you use it from the freezer, grate it - frozen - with your micro grater into whatever you are making.
same for lemongrass stalks.
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Not to speak for @NukeML as I don’t know what they intended, but most “ginger beer” is not actually fermented. Peel and grate your ginger and soak it in a simple syrup for a few hours or overnight. Strain the syrup through a cheesecloth, capturing all the grated ginger. Now twist the cheesecloth in a ball and really squeeze all the juice out of the ginger. You should be left with a highly ginger-spiced syrup. Add two tablespoons of ginger syrup to an 8-oz glass of ice. Top up with seltzer. Stir well, and enjoy a super spicy ginger ale.
How much ginger you use in the syrup, and how much syrup you use in a glass, is all to taste
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Hmmm… that I could do. Thanks!
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FWIW, I’d use a couple fingers of grocery store ginger to a cup of sugar and a cup of water. You’ll probably have to heat the water a little to get it to take up the sugar. Now that I’m thinking of it, we may have actually let the ginger simmer a bit in the syrup mix before cooling, straining, and storing. (We use the soak overnight method for berry syrups)
Good luck!
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Wow, that’s inspiring! I might try that next time we buy ginger.
One time a pinto bean sprouted during the soak so I stuck it in a pot on a windowsill and got a whole vine. It was a paltry harvest, but still cute for a Maine winter project.
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