I am chomping at the bit to do some kind of gardening activity, so I think I'll go ahead and start those zinnia seeds indoors. It will give me something fun to do this weekend. Last Saturday we had our annual Mid Atlantic seed swap get together and I picked up several seeds for perennials (columbines, joe pye weed, ageratum, hesperis, and a dianthus which is the "pink flower" offering for 2015 from Jill's (crriterologist) little girl Joyanna - she is now 5 and has been picking out a "pink flower" to put in our seed bags since she was 2). On Sunday, I got them all started in those aluminum foil cake pans with plastic lids and stuck them outside on the deck to try the winter sowing method. My only real seed starting successes so far have been with tomatoes. Trial and error, mostly error LOL...
Just for kicks, I looked up the freeze/frost dates for my zip code:
Each winter, on average, your risk of frost is from October 19 through April 19.
Almost certainly, however, you will receive frost from November 2 through April 5.
You are almost guaranteed that you will not get frost from May 4 through October 3.
Your frost-free growing season is around 183 days
