Brightening Up the Garden

In one of my old jobs, I drove down a road called Tank Farm Road to get to work.  There was a house with a small vegetable garden that I would always admire because they always planted a thick row of zinnias.  The zinnias would grow tall and fall all over each other, but the beautiful colors caught your eye, from reds, to pinks, yellows, oranges, white, and purple.

I'm a vegetable gardener first and foremost, but this year, I mixed things up a bit and planted sunflowers in the garden.  I didn't want to take up room on the garden for flowers, so I planted zinnias in the holes in the cinder blocks that line the ditch that runs on the northern edge of the garden.  Here is a look:

Red!

White!

Pink!

There's only one problem.  I filled the holes in the cinder blocks with soil, but it tends to dry out quickly when it doesn't rain (or if I don't water them) and the zinnias wilt and fade.  They didn't exactly thrive like the garden I admired that I spoke of earlier.

I plan on saving the seeds from the zinnias and I do indeed plan on planting them again next year, but I'll make room for them in the garden next year so that they can really thrive in the deep, rich soil.