One very inexpensive and concise text is Botany for Gardeners by Brian Capon. This is a text that is used for general horticultural courses so not extremely detailed or technical but certainly addresses all aspects of botany in a basic way. Should provide a helpful overview of the subject to begin with and then you can make some decisions about how to proceed further. Career options in botany are very broad but tend towards the more technical end of plant studies :-) Have you given any more thought as to what specific type of career in this field you'd like to pursue? Unless you have desires to become a plant scientist, it could be that acquiring a degree in botany is not exactly the best or most efficient/quickest route to take. Many folks who work professionally within the horticultural arena do not have botany degrees but have some other, often less technical plant-related course of study. A visit to your local college or university and a discussion with a guidance counselor may be helpful as well.

The Ultimate Koi edited by Nick Fletcher is really good book which shows Fish anatomy and physiology, Koi pond system. Good luck. Bonhe

Albert, Amazing - I just was at that site last night looking up some material on seeds. It is great and one article leads to another and you can get stuck there for hours and hours. Great information and easy to find what you are looking for although hard to stop checking all the links available. Mike, I will check the book you mentioned - glad to meet some other nerds! lol Thanks.

In the early years of my marriage one of my neighbors referred to my DH as 'the compost king' due to three large fancy bins turned often with careful layering of ingredients. However, after veggie gardening for 40+ years (his folks had the kids working in a large veggie garden as part of their chores), the glow wore off for him, and he no longer turns the compost piles several times a year. I can't turn them and still breathe since the molds and fungi create severe reactions when they get into the air, so I cold compost in three rings of wire fencing. Yes the pile heats up some, but not enough to kill weed seeds. So everything from the kitchen except chicken bones go into the pile along with any leaves and grass clippings DH is willing to give up (most get chopped and left on the lawn) and all garden debris except weed seeds along with often some manure. Then it just sits for 3 or more years until the fungal spores are at a manageable level. Occasionally a fox, coyote, or bear visits the pile to remove meat scraps, but I haven't had any other issues, and since space isn't at a premium for me and there aren't near neighbors, having three big piles in tidy containment is fine. The compost turns out just fine even though I don't deliberately balance greens and browns or fuss at all with it.