The Zinnias in the Ziegler Gardens Never End

All my life, zinnias have been the stuff of pretty summer bouquets–the multi-petaled flowers even a child could draw.  I knew zinnias to come in every cheerful color you can name. I even found zinnias to flourish—with watering—in the West African desert, and as I saved seed from season to season, found them lovely even when their last blooming dwindled to a row of all the same soft pink blossoms.

In this, my second summer cutting zinnias for Lisa, I have learned to know zinnias as never before. I tramp through the dewy ground cover beside a row of zinnias, looking the bed over.

You, with the floppy neck, I don’t want you.  Stay and get stronger by next harvest day.

You with the crooked stem–why did you contort yourself around the netting?  Your face is beautiful, but your stem would only annoy the flower-arrangers, so out you go onto the grass.

You, with the mildew turning your petals gray, I’m ignoring you.  Only the clearest and the brightest colors go into Lisa’s zinnia bundles.

You, with your tiny yellow flower parts so gorgeous and perfect, your seeds are beginning to form a brown background underneath, and I just can’t take you. What a pity!

But there are hundreds, no, thousands, of zinnias I can take.  And I do.  I snip the stem way down so next weeks’ zinnias can grow out long-stemmed.  I pull off the slimy lower leaves and the crisp upper ones.  I measure so all the stems in my hand are the same length, for preservation in the bucket. Row by row, and color by color, the zinnias are cut and tucked into a rainbow of buckets.

Start at six in the morning, lucky to finish by noon…lucky when there are no sleepy bumblebees in the petals to sting your hand…lucky to be adrift in a sea of color.  It’s the height of summer, and the zinnias in Ziegler Gardens never end.