Gotta Find a Home by Carol King

Let me tell ya a story about a hollyhock weevil: The gardener said to the weevil ”I see you’re on the square” Weevil said to the gardener, “yep my whole family’s there…..lookin for a home, gotta find a home.” The weevil said to the gardener”you better sell your machines, cause when I’m through with your hollyhocks you can’t even buy gasoline”. My apologies to Brook Benton but when ya got hollyhock weevils eating up your hollyhocks, ya gotta sing this song!

The hollyhock weevil is a strange looking bug that has a beak or a snout protruding from its head. If it were bigger, it would be one scary dude. I had to look closely at the blossom area (all eaten of course) to see them. In researching my hollyhock problem, I discovered that there are over 400 species of weevils in Colorado alone with 40,000 species worldwide. And I also discovered this bit of trivia: if every species of animal and plant were placed next to each other in a line, every 10th animal would be a weevil. And, yes, they are ALL looking for a home.

I used some organic insect killing soap which took care of some of them and then I thumped some of them off with my finger. The hollyhocks look really ratty but maybe I will still get a few blooms. In the meantime, if anything you have is being eaten up by something, go look, and if it’s got a snout you got weevils. Roses, rhubarb, sunflowers, strawberries, almost everything has its own special weevil.

Here’s some great information about weevils: http://whatsthatbug.com/Weevils.html.