zirconium

I spoke too soon about the French hollyhocks -- they've all produced blooms now, except for one, and that one is one of the larger, healthier-looking stalks, so who knows if it offended the bees or is simply taking its longer, even sweeter and perhaps every-other-year time than all the others. Even the one growing diagonally. (I laced some of the others to the fence for support, but that one looked runt-y enough that I hadn't bothered.)

In the toiling and spinning department, I'm waiting to hear back from various contacts about this and that, doing a fair bit of homework, and inching along in the never-ending quest to turn things right: