In a Vase, on Monday – A Thanksgiving Trio

Chris Mousseau

Given it’s almost mid October and we’ve already had a couple nights of light frost, I thought I’d cut the two or three dozen best looking Zinnia blooms yesterday and bring them indoors to decorate today’s Thanksgiving dinner table. Better than having them turn to mush still standing in the garden!

Butterflies and honey bees are all but gone now so I wasn’t worried about removing a food source. Adding some Verbena bonariensis was a different matter, as there are loads of bumbles and various large and small solitary bees landing for a late season top up – which could possibly make the difference between surviving the coming winter or not. I compromised by cutting some of the stems that overhang paths – places where self seeded baby verbenas wouldn’t exactly be welcome next year.

As a filler I cut some parsley leaves – there was a bumper crop in a raised bed this year and, if the roots survive, I look forward to parsley flowers attracting swallowtail butterflies and other pollinators next year. I’m joining Cathy at Rambling in the Garden again with a vase (or three…) of cut flowers from my garden.

Three Hyacinth jars ready for the Thanksgiving table

Cathy always includes a prop of some sort with her vase but since I didn’t have anything handy I thought I’d show you instead this columnar basil growing in the raised bed just to the right of these zinnia vases.

I don’t know the variety – the label simply said Columnar Basil. It’s a bit spicy though and very tasty. It’s grown a tremendous amount over the summer (this is more than a metre – 43″ – tall!) and for once it’s a variety that doesn’t bolt – no flowers at all so far! (The saucer with stones was a welcome watering hole for scores of hornets and wasps, mainly, during our hot summer.)

Have a lovely Thanksgiving day to Canadian readers – and a FABulous week to all!

19 Comments

  1. Such colorful Zinnias! Fortunately, Verbena b. does self seed and blooms so long…it’s a wonderful flower. I’m amazed at your huge Basil! Tastes so good in home made tomato soup. Have a yummy Thanksgiving dinner!

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  2. Happy Thanksgiving! When you mentioned having the Brussels sprouts at Thanksgiving, my poor American mind thought, “My goodness. That’s a long time away — will they last?” Now I’m with the program. Enjoy the day and the dinner, and the fruits of your labor, floral and otherwise.

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  6. ‘I thought I’d cut the two or three dozen best looking Zinnia blooms’….I wish, Chris!!! 😂 Not surprisingly they are gorgeous, and are complemented by generous pickings of verbena. It’s a very impressive column of basil you have too. Do you celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving yourself, Chris?

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      1. There is a Sicilian guy down here that makes the best pizza – it took me the better part of 10 years to figure out what was in the sauce, that basil. I am growing some now.

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  8. I brought in a lot of zinnias, too, last week. Now they are getting rained on, but I hope the frost might hold off for a few more weeks at least, here in Sunny California.

    In the past it seemed to me that in zinnia mixes the magenta ones were dominant. I often buy one or two single color plants — usually orange or pale pink or white — to balance out what I will get from the seed mix. Zinnias are so hearty and cheerful. It’s always a joy to have them finishing up the season with a lot of color.

    Yours are brilliant and I love seeing them!

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    1. Thank you! Definitely a great way to end the season – an encouragement to start planning next year’s garden perhaps…I think I’ll try your idea of a single coloured seed packet – orange or red maybe…maybe red and white…

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  9. Those zinnias are a gorgeous way to end the flower year Chris, and look wonderful lined up in your three vases. Mine got caught in the first frost, even though it was very light, and they will be sorely missed! Are you going to harvest all that lovely basil before the next cold spell?

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    1. Everyone here says Make Pesto with basil – but I have never gotten into that groove ….I use it for stews and sauces generally. All that to say, I have dried a lot – enough to get me through the winter, but much of that tower of spicy basil will likely wind up in the compost pile after our first hard frost…

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