She says, he says

She says: “Mom, you’d better cut that plant back. It’s blocking the entrance to the house!”
He says: “What gorgeous color! Don’t touch it! I’d be happy to inconvenience myself for that plant!”
I have this dilemma just about every year. To chop or not to chop. Many years ago, I ordered a packet of Malva sylvestris subspecies mauritiana ‘Bibor Felho’ from Thompson & Morgan. The best of the original plants attained shrub-like proportions, with blossoms three inches across. Those plants died after the first year, being more of an annual than a perennial for me, but every year since then new plants have grown from seed.

Could you cut down this plant?

As we all know, when plants seed themselves, they find their own best place to sprout and grow. When this particular plant showed up this spring, it was on the outside of the railing, and since I had no reason to believe it wouldn’t stay there, I didn’t pull it. Just as your hair can look fine for weeks, and then suddenly you realize you need a haircut, somehow when my back was turned this mallow developed a decided lean. Of course I didn’t realize it until it was in spectacular bloom.Honestly, could you cut down this plant? I know some of you could. Some of you would have noticed it leaning, and pruned it in a timely manner, and it would have bushed out from the pruning and would not be leaning and would possibly look even more gorgeous than it does.

And I bet you get your haircut before it looks like it needs it, too.

Thanks to the kindness of strangers (and the utility of search engines), I now know that bibor felho is Hungarian for purple cloud. It took me years to find that out, and it bothered me more than a shaggy haircut–or a shaggy plant.