秀色可餐 : Is zinnia beautiful or delicious?

We collected “tons of zinnia seeds” from the zinnias that we had in our garden last year and germinated them in the new garden late spring.  They grow too many, too close together (too close for comfort); we haven’t had time transplanting them.  Many of them ended up not too healthy, so we transplanted the unhealthy ones out to the old garden with no chain-link fences, leaving them vulnerable to the mercy of the deer and rabbits.

Give us some time and we will find out whether the deer or rabbits would see zinnia beautiful or delicious.  It is good that deer or rabbits doesn’t know Chinese, otherwise, they would think 秀色可餐 as we do.

秀 色可餐 is literally translated as “so beautiful and attractive that looks delicious and can be eaten; mouthwatering”; it means extremely attractive and applies to women only.

The photos are our first and second zinnia and those transplanted out to the unfenced old garden.