From “Zinnias” in Some Flowers by Vita Sackville-West:
“[The] original zinnia, or Zinnia elegans, was introduced into European countries in 1796, and since then has been ‘improved’ into the garden varieties we now know and grow. Many flowers lose by this so-called improvement; the zinnia has gained….
“Some people call it artificial-looking, and so in a way it is. It looks as though it had been cut out of bits of cardboard ingeniously glued together into the semblance of a flower. It is prim and stiff and arranged and precise, almost geometrically precise, so that many people who prefer the more romantic, lavish flowers reject it just on account of its stiffness and regularity….
“[There] are few flowers more brilliant without being crude, and since they are sun-lovers the hot dry spot where we plant them will shower the maximum of light on the formal heads and array of colours. Whether we grow them in a mixture (sold, I regret to say, under the description ‘art shades’) or separate the pink from the orange, the red from the magenta, is a matter of taste. Personally I like them higgledy-piggledy, when they look like those pats of paint squeezed out upon the palette, and I like them all by themselves, not associated with anything else.
“As cut flowers they are invaluable: they never flop, and they last I was going to say for weeks.”
From “There is No Straight Line” in Listen With the Eye by Samuel Hazo:
Everything is circles:
the spun top
of the world,
the night, the day,
the night again —
the corn
from seed
to stalk
to corn
to seed….
There is spring
in snow,
and summer
in April,
and autumn
in the first zinnia,
and January
in the last….
Hello!
This is the second of four posts with photos of zinnias that I took over the past few weeks. The first post is Zinnia Elegance (1 of 4).
Here I show some additional zinnia colors. I would like the white ones a lot, I think, but I could only find two zinnias in white so have posted some in pink and yellow-orange shades that were more plentiful.
Thanks for taking a look!
