The beauty of nature

All of the food we grow either starts or ends as a flower. Some are beautiful, some are plain, but they're all amazing in their own way.

Bananas

Dill

Onions

Cilantro

Lettuce

Broccoli

String beans

Cherry tomatoes

Potatoes

Cucumber (notice the baby cucumber to the left)

A birthday gift

My friend, Laura, sent seeds for my birthday this past year. Here is the result....

Purple basil

We have already made yummy caprese salads, added it as a topping on pizza and included it in tomato sauce.

Morning glory bush

Our first watermelon

This is our first watermelon "baby" sitting on a bed of dry leaves.

This is a second watermelon about a month later. Notice the leaf in the upper left corner...it's still pretty tiny!

Our baby is all grown up....

The life cycle of cotton

When we moved to St. Petersburg, Ken promptly planted some cotton seeds he had obtained. Being from New York and then South Florida, I had never had an opportunity to see cotton grow. The life cycle of the plant is incredible and beautiful.

It dawned on me one day that if I had never seen a cotton plant, surely none of my friends and plenty of city dwellers had never seen it either.

With that in mind, I bring you cotton.....

This is what I will call the cotton pod. It's the first thing to appear.

Then, you get this beautiful flower.

Which eventually turns this wonderful pink color.

From that, the first signs of cotton emerge.

The cotton seeds sit at the base of and among the cotton.