My prize is the flower

Many ambitions occur side by side in my garden.  Bees want to gather pollen.  I desire zinnias for gorgeous bouquets.  The zinnia plants simply lust to reproduce.  My job, harvesting flowers for markets and parties, frustrates their job, to reproduce and add new members to the family.  

My prize is the flower.  But that prize is also the plant’s nursery.  Once I pluck the flower, the plant must start over and initiate a new reproductive cycle.  It must launch a new flower to open its petals and encourage bees to burrow deep into its center to bring pollen to ova.  Then, if the flower avoids my shears, it will shelter the growth of seeds and produce the next generation. 

For most of the week, I leave this process undisturbed.  But on harvest days, my object and my plants’ are at odds.  I must find the perfect zinnias for market -- a bloom that is generous with petals opening flat and wide, elegant with vibrant color, unblemished by rain or wind, strong of stem to support such beauty.  Once snipped, this young adult representative of the zinnia family can no longer accomplish it generational task.  I have interfered with the plant’s cycle by borrowing its beauty.

Undaunted, the plant starts agains.  As long as I frustrate its goal of setting seed, the plant will valiantly continue its task: produce those nurseries we call flowers.  Our parallel but competing goals co-exist all summer.  My zinnias produce their colorful nurseries -- while, green, purple, read, orange -- and I pluck them.  By early September, those plants will be six feet tall.  When markets end after Labor Day, I finally allow the plants to accomplish their natural goal and set seed.

They seem to sigh with relief but quickly grow old.  Petals turn brown along the edges.  Leaves become dull and brittle.  But inside that aging body are long narrow zinnias seeds -- children for the next generation.