The last two months have seen hundreds of beautiful flowers and now some of those blossoms are going to seed. My job, as the caretaker of this little plot, is to harvest seeds to plant next summer.
I have been pleasantly surprised at how easy cosmos was to grow. This batch was a mix of seeds I had bought from a small, organic seed company and the rest was "my inheritance" from a small flower I used to help out at (which closed down last year). The flowers all look the same to me, I am not sure what came from which source but, they were all SO easy to grow that I will certainly be saving these seeds.
All shades of red, orange, pink and yellow zinnia's made an appearance this year though I was particularly taken with these bi-colored ones. I love the diversity of zinnias and will be saving seeds from all the colors and especially these yellow and red ones.
I have noticed that while the cosmos and zinnia are in flower they have been making a nice protective roof for the basil plants that are growing under the protection of their leaves.
As I watered this morning I saw fava, cilantro, and calendula plants just sprouting out beneath the protection of basil and the flowers.
For about a half an hour or so I wandered around the pathways gathering cosmos seeds, zinnia flowers and seeds, and a couple of calendula flowers too.
And lastly I placed them on either in the herb dryer of on baskets to slowly dehydrate before they will be stored in the apothecary tonight. Indoors is good for long term storage but the fresh air and indirect sunlight does a lot to move the process along during such a humid time of year.
In the end I also collected plantago and echinacea leaves which will be added to a healing tea mix. The dried flowers are mostly for decoration and of course the flower seeds are destined to be planted again in late spring!