Zinnias Are Blooming

My flower adventure for this summer was planting Texas wildflowers and zinnias in the space where the swimming pool was last year at this time.

We had to go from a yard full of bare dirt to a better, greener space with colorful things growing in it.

And, of course, the weeds took to filling the space in the yard like maniacs on steroids.  For every flower that bloomed, twenty to fifty weeds were thriving.  And I, suffering from arthritis have a hard time pulling the weeds out by hand.  And I will not use herbicide.  We, as a people, have spread enough poison in the world as it is.  It has always been my intention to grow things that consume the carbon dioxide and spew out things like oxygen and nitrogen, the things we can actually breath.  I mean to help life grow, not prune it or kill it.

Even the weeds like thistles can have beautiful blossoms to share with butterflies and bees.

I have to do a better job of weeding the flower plot.  Weeds can take the sunlight and nutrients away from the plants you want to thrive.  One of the workers who removed the pool was a sunflower seed chewer.  It is not mere coincidence that we have more than twenty sunflower plants growing as weeds in the yard.

But the point of this whole flower-petal essay is that the zinnias are blooming, bright, and loud, and beauteous, at a time when I need the color… need the beauty… to balance against the darkness.