IF Mondays are blue and the weather is relentlessly grey, no wonder Bette Giddy is delighted by a surprise burst of colour in her garden.

These beautiful hollyhocks have been cheering up January for pensioner Bette and her husband in Menheniot.

‘They’re beautiful,’ said Bette.

‘It’s lovely to have a bit of colour, especially with all this rain.

‘Back in the summer we had a storm which broke all the hollyhocks. We lost about five or six plants, but these have grown back from the small clump that was left at the base.’

Is it down to Bette’s green fingers?

‘More likely due to neglect,’ she joked.