New to me garden escapee

I love finding new-to-me plants on my walks. These beauties were trailside, and I was hopeful I had come upon a new (to me) native flower. Alas, this musk mallow is not native to Minnesota. So my feral trailside stand was likely an ornamental escapee. We have seven native mallows in Minnesota, but this one isn’t on the list. The flowers are indeed pink but I did take a little poetic license with my image editing in order to saturate the colors as bit to my liking. You can see I was catching them on the backside of their blooming.

Ohhh, by the way, a painted turtle mama laid a clutch of eggs beside our deck today! We feel honored to have witnessed this. Gestation take 70-90 days, and in northern climates may over-winter. So, tomorrow we will be building a turtle egg cage to protect the area. You can google it if you’re curious :-)

musk mallow (Malva moschata) var. Rosea