The zinnias of summer stole the odd moments in the still air,
and I spent the warm mornings in admiration
of their pensive performance.
Dozens of their concentric perfect petals
in profound parades of intense hues
mocked the drab house and the miniature garden
with the winsome white picket.
They were sovereignty spoken in unspeakable order at the foot of a Throne.
~Edited excerpt from a poem by Elizabeth Kirkley Best

Like this poet, I have always thought of picket fences as winsome, and this one with the colorful splashes of zinnias spread out around it is especially charming.  As I stood taking these photographs, the bright and perky zinnias actually seemed to cool down the torrid heat around me.  And in their colorful, unsophisticated simplicity they “stole” a welcome measure of pleasurable “odd moments” from the weighty air of August’s stifling heat.

“They will feed beside the roads and find pasture on every barren hill.  They will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat down on them.  He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them beside springs of water. . .”  Isaiah 49:9b-10   ✝