zinnias

There was a threat of frost last night. It's been chilly here. I considered rushing out to our garden to pick the rest of the swiss chard, the basil and the eggplant but what I really cared about were the zinnias. I risked leaving them there, knowing we are on a hill and frost usually gives us a break in the early days of fall, preferring the low lying areas.

My batch of zinnias made it through the high winds of Hurricane Irene a few weeks ago. A friend glanced over at them, "you'd better pick them before the storm." she warned. I did not.

Last night brought a freak cold spell surely to be followed by long, lazy, warm September days. How happy I was to see stems reaching to the sky this morning, undaunted by a little cold.

Zinnias represent summer to me. They can't be reproduced in a green house to my satisfaction. They look fake, the bright colors garish. But coming from a fall garden, the colors are electric next to each other. They have the heat of salsa, New Mexico, adobe, fire. They are hearty, lasting forever in a vase on the table, unlike other flowers that drop all their leaves and droop after a few days.

I will fill a vase with zinnias to take to my writing class on Monday. My elderly students at the retirement community look forward to the colorful flowers and lament along with me the week I come without them due to frost. They all had zinnias in their own gardens at one time and some still do.

And Madelyn loved them. I planted them for her. I made sure her room had that bright dash of color until the very last one gave in to the cold. This summer I have given bunches of them away to others in her memory. It's made me feel a little better.