Color!

Since I’m an artist, color is essential to me (or maybe it’s the other way around). It’s fairly easy to find the purple and magenta flowers that are the backbone of my garden but the orange ones that complete my color vision are harder to find. I found these orange zinnias marked down at the local garden center and finally have some orange. (I do have a touch of orange with my million bells but I’ll write about that in a future post.) The garden centers are beginning to mark things down more every week but the longer one waits for “just the right price”, the more TLC will be required.


This variety usually does well in my garden, unlike its cousin a deep pink “cherry” mini zinnia that re-blooms in white with a tinge of pink—nothing like the magenta double-flowered beauty I bought at a garden center. The same thing happened last year. Hmm, I wonder if they’re like flamingos, which have to eat certain crustaceans to maintain their beautiful color? Whatever the problem, they apparently didn’t like Friday’s FOUR INCHES of rain since I found two of them dead this morning. Hopefully, next year I’ll resist their temptation. That’s part of the fun of gardening though, to try things and see what works and what doesn’t, to learn and then move on. (Recommended for gardening—not marriage!)