Zinnia Quotes

You can’t go around holding the worst thing you ever did in your hand, staring at it. You gotta cook supper, put gas in the car. You gotta plant more zinnias.

Zinnia always wants to hug me and pat me because she has a boy my same age named Melvin. I said maybe some day Melvin could come play at our farm, and I could bring him to the maze and show him the shortcuts. Zinnia started crying. That’s when I seen that she has freckles.

If He could weave the tapestry of time, if He could predetermine each person’s path, He could hold her safe and fast in the storm. Tears burned Zinnia’s eyes. In the breaking, in the pain, in the questions, He never left her.

The panic attacks have been a part of Zinnia’s life for almost six months. They allow no pathway back to the innocent complacency with which she once made sense of the world around her. With every new attack more of her identity crumbles. Every day the panic rubs something else out that has been achieved with application, sometimes with inspiration.

At that moment the ghost dance seems to Zinnia like the relationship of two people who never quite consummate the love they feel for each other.

But false niceness can never and will never produce an authentic, deeply meaningful relationship, just like weeds won’t magically produce zinnias.

I look on quietly as a breeze stirs her dress around her, surrounded by cosmos and zinnias, dahlias and roses. She sees me and smiles, waving with a gloved hand. She really does remind me of my mother.

How plants grow: Quickly. Most plants grow fast and die young. People get seventy years, a bean plant gets four months, maybe five. Once the itty-bitty baby plant peeks out of the ground, it sprouts leaves, so it can absorb more sun. Then it sleeps, eats, and sunbathes until it’s ready to flower—a teenage plant. This is a bad time to be a rose or a zinnia or a marigold, because people attack with scissors and cut off what’s pretty. But plants are cool. If the rose is picked, the plant grows another one. It needs to bloom to produce more seeds.

I realized that Romeo and Juliet meet and fall in love and get married and die in three days, which is like a super-condensed version of what happens to most people over their whole life. One way or the other, you end up losing the person, but you still are happy that you loved them. I mean, Uncle Dub wouldn't have wished that he had never met Aunt Zinnia, just because he knew that one day she wouldn't be in his life anymore.

...the reality of late summer and early autumn when Adelaide, more than any place on earth, and as simply as pouring tea from a pot, pours fourth from a lavish cornucopia into gardens and parks and markets and arcade stalls a cascade of carnations and grapes and melons, guavas and Michaelmas daisies and tomatoes, zinnias and belladonna lilies and tuberoses, lavender and quinces and cumquats and pomegranates, roses and roses and roses.

Zinnia Riddle woke up Tuesday morning with one ghost in her heart and another waiting in her kitchen.

You stare at anything long enough and suddenly it looks monstrous.” She had in fact turned away from him to stare at the bowl of flowers in the middle of the table. Old tea roses, falling to pieces amid the baby’s breath and fern and purple zinnias. And they did look absolutely alien, these things, the way that insects always do, and sort of horrible! What were these things, really?

Roses climbed the shed, entwined with dark purple clematis, leaves as glossy as satin. There were no thorns. Patience's cupboard was overflowing with remedies, and the little barn was often crowded with seekers. The half acre of meadow was wild with cosmos and lupine, coreopsis, and sweet William. Basil, thyme, coriander, and broad leaf parsley grew in billowing clouds of green; the smell so fresh your mouth watered and you began to plan the next meal. Cucumbers spilled out of the raised beds, fighting for space with the peas and beans, lettuce, tomatoes, and bright yellow peppers. The cart was righted out by the road and was soon bowed under glass jars and tin pails of sunflowers, zinnias, dahlias, and salvia. Pears, apples, and out-of-season apricots sat in balsa wood baskets in the shade, and watermelons, some with pink flesh, some with yellow, all sweet and seedless, lined the willow fence.

The cabinets and shelves are a bright busy choreography of oils, shampoos, conditioners, scrubs, lotions, salts, unguents. Zinnia loves buying pots and bottles and tubes of alchemised essences that smell like yearning or intimacy on the skin.

WHAT WE WANT of course is the same old story. The trees pushing out their leaves, fluttering them, shucking them off, the water thrashing around in the oceans, the tweedling of the birds, the unfurling of the slugs, the worms vacuuming dirt. The zinnias and their pungent slow explosion. We want it all to go on and go on again, the same thing each year, monotonous and amazing, just as if we were still behaving ourselves, living in tents, raising sheep, slitting their throats for God’s benefit, refusing to invent plastics. For unbelief and bathrooms you pay a price. If apples were the Devil’s only bait we’d still be able to call our souls our own, but then the prick threw indoor plumbing into the bargain and we were doomed. Now we use up a lot of paper telling one another how to conserve paper, and the sea fills up with killer coffee cups, and we worry about the sun and its ambivalent rays.

Mount Pleasant was an older town, where no two houses, standing side by side, seemed to come out of the same architectural style, with nineteenth-century Victorians up against pastel-colored postwar ramblers. Most of the houses had traditional flower gardens with marigolds and zinnias, and some with head-high sunflowers.

She turned to put the basket of bread on the table and saw Brian, and the clutch of mums and zinnias he held in his hand. "It seemed to call for them," he said. She stared at the cheerful fall bloossoms, then up into his face. "You picked me flowers." The sheer disbelief in her voice had him moving his shoulders restlessly. "Well,you made me dinner, with wine and candles and the whole of it. Bedsides, they're your flowers anyway." "No,they're not." Drowning in love she set the basket down, waited. "Until you give them to me." "I'll never understand why women are so sensitive over posies." He held them out. "Thank you." She closed her eyes, buried her face in them. She wanted to remember the exact fragrance, the exact texture. Then lowering them again, she lifted her mouth to his for a kiss. Rubbed her cheek against his. His arms came around her so suddenly, so tightly, she gasped. "Brian? What is it?" That gesture,the simple and sweet gesture of cheek against cheek nearly destroyed him. "It's nothing. I just like the way you feel against me when I hold you." "Hold me any tighter,I'll be through you.

The massive parterre on the other side of the house was magnificent, but here she wanted some smaller beds. Now, early daffodils bobbed their heads in the gentle breeze, as if calling out ‘good morning’. Bluebells danced between them, doing a merry jig in the golden sunlight. Pink and mauve asters grew with zinnias behind them, while dahlias, peonies and roses grew behind the others

Marcus murmured Arioch’s name, but a thread of warning laced his tone. “Anthi and Zinnia know what they’re doing.” Zin may, but Anthi? Bossy Brunette looked like she excelled in killing people with death glares. He’d wager the body count was in the double digits. The high double digits. No wonder Holdswell lacked sufficient population to fill the amount of empty buildings he’d seen lining the streets and sprinkling the land.

I heard a rapid alternation of notes, a vibrating staccato of an ancient instrument, nearly as old as nature herself, a cricket singing in my garden last night, the first time this year. When turning my garden's soil, I often uncover crickets, curmudgeons that scramble to find solitude and cover from the light, but I rarely hear their ancient song 'till near summer's end. Although the wind is now lofting the branches and rustling the leaves, the evening sun still warms my face. And my garden still blooms full with pink-papered hollyhocks and blue, green spikes of lavender, and roses, bright pinks and yellows, all glowing from sunshine-swelled canes, and zinnias, rainbow-shingled orbs, and more. And yet, I am already dreading the coming of fall, all dressed in small rags of red, yellow, and orange. I know that my summer garden is nearing its end, as hailed by the cricket's song.

The Herb Farm reminded Marguerite of the farms in France; it was like a farm in a child's picture book. There was a white wooden fence that penned in sheep and goats, a chicken coop where a dozen warm eggs cost a dollar, a red barn for the two bay horses, and a greenhouse. Half of the greenhouse did what greenhouses do, while the other half had been fashioned into very primitive retail space. The vegetables were sold from wooden crates, all of them grown organically, before such a process even had a name- corn, tomatoes, lettuces, seventeen kinds of herbs, squash, zucchini, carrots with the bushy tops left on, spring onions, radishes, cucumbers, peppers, strawberries for two short weeks in June, pumpkins after the fifteenth of September. There was chèvre made on the premises from the milk of the goats; there was fresh butter. And when Marguerite showed up for the first time in the summer of 1975 there was a ten-year-old boy who had been given the undignified job of cutting zinnias, snapdragons, and bachelor buttons and gathering them into attractive-looking bunches.

Some annuals are so fast-growing that you can sprinkle their seeds on good soil in late spring, right outside, and they’ll quickly sprout and grow. This group includes popular ones like zinnias, marigolds, and nasturtiums. This process may require you to do some thinning at some point, but otherwise, it’s dead easy.

Just call me Zinnia, or Zinnie, or Auntie Z. No need to call me great until I've done something of greatness to deserve it.

Spring flew by and summer quickly arrived; my belly grew right alongside the daylilies, zinnias, and tomatoes Marlboro Man’s mom had helped me plant in a small garden outside the house. For Marlboro Man, the coming of the baby proved to be an effective diversion from the aftermath of the previous fall’s market woes. More and more, it looked like Marlboro Man might have to sell some of his land in order to keep the rest of the ranch afloat. As someone who didn’t grow up on a ranch, I failed to feel the gravity of the situation. You have a problem, you have an asset, you sell the asset, you solve the problem. But for Marlboro Man, it could never be that simple or sterile. For a ranching family, putting together a ranch takes time--sometimes years, even generations of patiently waiting for this pasture or that to become available. For a rancher, the words of Pa in Gone With the Wind ring beautifully and painfully true: Land is the only thing worth working for…worth fighting for, worth dying for. Because it’s the only thing that lasts…The thought of parting with a part of the family’s ranch was a painful prospect; Marlboro Man felt the sting daily. To me it seemed like an easy fix; to Marlboro Man, it was a personal failure. There was nothing I could do to make it better except to be there to catch him in my arms every night, which I willingly and eagerly did. I was a soft, lumpy pillow. With heartburn and swollen ankles.

I, er…” I couldn’t tell them the truth. Neither one of them could keep a secret. They’d practically handed Zinnia and me itemized inventories of our Christmas presents in November because they were too excited to keep quiet. By the time Christmas Day rolled around, the wrapping was purely ceremonial.

She stepped inside a vestibule with a silver bowl of pure, clear water set on a pedestal made of what Delphine could only assume was a very large, very sturdy zinnia. Was she supposed to wash in it, or was she firmly barred from touching it? She glanced in its shallow depth, and it began to pulse and swirl with pale light. She stepped away quickly. A filmy veil of light separated the interior; she held out a tentative finger, and the light brushed it like organza and separated for her. She stepped through into the Court, sprawling and open to the sky above, yet bound by the pale walls on all sides. Inside, the Court looked back at her. Dozens of Fae, gathered in twos and threes, beneath trees of gold and silver and around pools of deep azure blue, inside pavilions made of sheer flower petals and on carpets that must have been woven bird feathers. They all watched her, silently, unmoving. Each was almost painful to look at, beautiful and yet sharp and cold. All of them were arrayed in the spoils of their bargains, with sheer gowns of watercolor silk and robes of pliable silver, elaborate braids adorned with finely wrought metal and tautly bound silk, and even, on a few, wings and horns and talons refashioned from wood and bone and glass. Delphine was terrified of them, and yet also drawn to them. A great and terrible power hummed among them, just below the surface, a nearly tangible potential for change, for creation, for more than anything the world on her own side of the veil could offer.

Zuchon is the first to arrive at the party! Let's run through the Zinnia arch to the garden of love. Zuchon is a mix of two breeds: Shih Tzu and Bichon Frise, and is affectionate, loyal and gentle. Zinnia means thoughts of absent friends.

Funny how we beat ourselves up trying to get a perfect recipe, a perfect dessert, a perfect party in the books. There’s so much that goes into making a meal that might be forgotten in mere weeks. Not everyone will remember the place settings, the sprig of coral and lavender zinnias. The plump raspberry garnish in their drink. But that’s not the point when it comes to loved ones. You heat up the waffle iron. You shave the ice. You rescue the egg yolks. You have to. You make something new with what you have. You take the extra bit of time. It doesn’t always turn out how you think it should. You make it anyway.

His lovely wife tends her zinnias in the mild morning light and his find young man comes fondly mishandling that perpetually lost sheep of a cat, Soapy, once more back from perdition for the time being, to what would have been general rejoicing.

FOR 17 YEARS, Tom Carroll and his wife Hermine Ricketts tended an organic garden in the front yard of their home in Miami Shores Village, Florida. They grew everything from arugula to zinnias, mostly for home consumption. Then, one day in August 2013, disaster struck. It wasn’t a hurricane, a flood, or a drought. It was the government.

Fight, Zinnia, for your soul. You only have one, and one shall remain once you've escaped his clutches... Do not give up on yourself, for strength... it comes... from God.

I remember one woman making paper flowers to sell, with different herbs . . . She made them so fast, and so many . . . that as I watched, her first few zinnias became quickly enough a few hundred, and grew in their happiness to the size of sunflowers. The sunflowers themselves grew to the size of pumpkins, the snapdragons grew ominous, and the rosemary fragrant.

A short, slight gentleman was standing in the living room. He had wavy marcelled hair and he was wearing a brown summer-weight suit that had probably been new twenty years ago. His hair was more gray than not, and his skin was the color of fine cocoa parchment. He was holding a small bouquet of zinnias. I made him for his late sixties, but I could’ve been off five years either way.

She watched the early-morning sun filter out from the trees still glistening from frost, and imagined the way here perennial beds would be thick and wild with beauty in just a few months. And her zinnias and sunflowers and trumpet vine would cover the fence and keep Patsy out. The messy look. That is just how Patsy described it last summer. After Elizabeth dug up the boxwoods and hollies with their geometric precision, their obedient square ugliness, she planted daisies, black-eyed Susans, coneflowers, and phlox. She planted zinnias and cosmos that she had grown from seed. The border had exploded in color and texture. The plants had flowered wild and strong and generous. Every morning, Elizabeth had fingered the velvety petals.

Things feel hard now, but it will pass. Everything passes, and something new comes along to fill the space.” As she spoke, her tone shifted. She wasn’t talking about me anymore. “You can’t go around holding the worst thing you ever did in your hand, staring at it. You gotta cook supper, put gas in the car. You gotta plant more zinnias.

Related to fertility, the bat was known in Zapotec as bigidiri zinnia—flesh butterfly (mariposa de carne)—and was a benign god.

I bought packets of wildflower and zinnia seeds, and sprinkled them around the falling-down house. Maybe the rain we can expect tonight will do something about it.

The balloon burst, everything about him, everything inside just spilling to the floor in one slippery mess. So he turned around and left, went back to Oak, went to his room, fell onto his futon, and stared up at the ceiling. And he thought about the other thing Zinnia had said. The thing about freedom.

At the house in Montclair, Daisy's mother had a quarter-acre patch in the backyard where she grew vegetables and flowers. From spring through summer and into the early fall, that was where she spent most of her free time, tilling the soil, planting and weeding and watering, hand-pollinating eggplants with a tiny paintbrush, or sprinkling ground-up bone meal on her roses and zinnias, to keep the ants away. Daisy would help her to put up the vegetables she'd harvested, turning cucumbers into pickles and tomatoes into marinara sauce.

He examined the zinnia he had intended to save. As he held it in the palm of his hand to the light the flower was not such a curious specimen after all. Not worth saving. He plucked the soft, bright petals and the last one came out on love. But who? Who would he be loving now? No one person. Anybody decent who came in out of the street to sit for an hour and have a drink. But no one person. He had known his loves and they were over. Alice. Madeline and Gyp. Finished. Leaving him either better or worse. Which? However you looked at it.

let grow more winter fat wine-cup western wild rose so little open prairie left little waves of bluestem little fuzzy tongue penstemon the golden currant nodding onion quieter now as well only a few clusters of Colorado butterfly plant still yawn into the night where there once was prairie a few remaining fireflies abstract themselves over roads and concrete paths prairie wants to stretch full out again and sigh- purple prairie clover prairie zinnia prairie dropseed nodding into solidago bee balm brushing rabbitbrush-prairie wants prairie wants prairie wants

She wandered among the wooden crates, picking up tomatoes, peeling back the husks on ears of corn, adding two red peppers to her shopping basket and a bunch of very thin asparagus, a bouquet of zinnias for the table, and seven imperial-looking white and purple gladiolas to put in the stone pitcher that she kept by the front door. She was loaded down with fresh things, beautiful, glorious provisions. Could she stop time and stay here, with her basket full, surrounded by organic produce? Could she just die here and call it a happy end?

Kind of like hiding in plain sight. That describes stealth camping exactly.

As I began to dream, I could see a full day, and then another, and then a summer sweeping speedily over the zinnias in my mother’s flower garden, and how the shadow of the house touched the blossoms, then moved on.

Lila’s great aunt Zinnia is a necro-psychometrist. Basically, by holding or touching something that belongs to someone, she can tell if they’re alive or dead. Well. Dead mostly. Death magic runs in Lila’s family. It’s probably responsible for her turning into a zombie and for why Sin’s necromancy is so strong.

Clearly, Fern thought, remembering his diagnosis of Zinnia, he's psychosexually immature, so his body reacts by making him sick. He'll get better when he wants to get better.

Fern had thrown up more while pregnant than she ever had in her life, and Zinnia threw up almost five times more than that, and finally--finally--Dr. Vincent knew what it felt like for your body to be out of your control.