As a countdown to the book being released hopefully in the next 30 days, here are some of my comments on the pages of the book.
The main photo is of Cosmos flowers, as is the lower photo. The photo to the right are Marigolds. Annual flowers (and plants) bloom just once in their lifetime and then die, unlike an apple tree which could give fruit each and every year for a very long time.
Annuals usually require very little nutrients in the soil. After the flowers are pollinated, they turn into seeds. You can easily get the and dry them out, or let them naturally fall to the ground. The Cosmos you see above was actually the first generation from seeds that I had purchased in 2009. Today, in 2012, there is still one Cosmos plant our garden that is an offspring of the original flowers, separated by anywhere from 3-6 generations (as they sometimes bloom all year round in Hawaii).
Here is a recent photo (3/1/2012) that I took of the surviving Cosmos.
