A History of Zinnias

Excerpt

Excerpt

In the idyllic town of Nicasio, California, not far from where I grew up, a prim and proper elementary school principal was fired for growing marijuana in her garden. She admitted having smoked it almost daily for eighteen years as an aid for relaxing and to stay up late correcting papers. The odd thing about the principal’s plight was that she was growing marijuana as a border around her zinnia bed! This, of course, is opposite to the garden norm in which zinnias should have encircled the marijuana bed as camouflage. Even so, this would have been pointless because zinnias aren’t tall enough to mask cannabis—or so I’m told. Instead of being fired for growing pot in her garden, it seems that the principal should have been fired as a poor example of rational garden design. In her defense she explained, “I do not consider marijuana a habit-forming drug . . . but for me, nicotine is."

For me, zinnias are the drug of choice. Their flowers, coming in every size, shape, and color except blue, are a mainstay of the summer and fall garden, blazing away without a care in the world. After growing all sorts of them for years, I became fascinated by their history—perhaps “antihistory”is a better word—when attempting to discover some sort of truth about their historical development, a history, it turns out, verging on a puzzling mystery at best or a stew of illusive facts peppered with semifiction at worst.