Stones and Zinnias

Under the Ohio soil there is an endless supply of stones of all sizes. Every year when plowing, my farmer pulls out more stones and stacks them in the old watering trough. The trough is now overflowing with stones. Some of them are quite pretty, being of different colors of granite. People in Ohio use stones to put around the edges of their flower gardens. They often have 2 large stones at the entrance of their driveway. My farm is no different. Someone in the distant past put 2 large boulders at the end of my driveway. My mother planted orange daylilies around them which bloom all summer. I made a circle of stones around the mailbox post. I started this project several years ago. I have daffodils which come up in the spring and chrysanthemums which come up again in the fall. This year the stones were overgrown with grass and weeds. so I had to take my weed wacker and clear the stones in the area around that mailbox post. Then I put in another layer of daffodil bulbs which I sprinkle with cayenne pepper to keep animals from digging them up and eating them. Then I put on more soil and planted zinnias for summer. They also make a pretty picture around the mailbox with their vibrant colors. For those of you who are young and don't remember, food used to come in tin containers with a paper labels. My mother would take off the paper label and use the can as a flower vase for the kitchen table. In the summer, she would always have zinnias in the tin can. It seems a vision of summer farm life to me, so I try to keep it up. Unfortunately, zinnias are annuals not perennials, so I will have to replant them again next summer. Still, it's worth the effort to me. Now, when I look at my tin can filled with red, orange, pink, and yellow zinnias, it brings back memories of all the summers of my childhood.

P.S. I'm adding a photo of my new mail box.