Hi Highlander, In response to the question in the title of your message, "What will 2nd generation zinnias look like?", the answer would be, assuming that the first generation was pollinated by bees, that the 2nd generation will look somewhat similar to the 1st generation but with some zinnias that are different. "If pollen came from a red flower and pollinated that purple-pink flower, will those seeds be a cross between red and purple-pink? " There is some semantics here. If you took pollen from a red zinnia and used it to pollinate a purple-pink zinnia, you would say that you crossed the two zinnias. People would say that you "made a cross between red and purple-pink". So, in that context, the answer to your question would be "Yes", pollen went from one zinnia to another, so a cross was made. But there is a very real complication to the event. Zinnias are normally bee pollinated and bees visit many zinnias merely to gather nectar for honey, and the pollinations that they do are completely accidental. Which implies randomness. So, in your example of the red zinnia and the purple-pink zinnia, unless they came from a carefully controlled laboratory experiment, they were randomly pollinated by bees and both zinnias are heterozygous. Meaning that they are not pure strains. So each pollen grain from each zinnia contains a random recombination of genes from the male parent. And we have no idea what that recombination might be, because some of the DNA codes could have come from the recessives. The same thing with the egg cells -- their DNA is a random recombination of the female parent's DNA codes, some dominant and some recessive. The genetics of the egg cells differs from the female parent and the genetics of the pollen cells differs from the male parent. Both the pollen cell and the egg cell represent "virtual" zinnias that can differ significantly from the zinnias that we see, and their union represents an F1 hybrid between two such virtual zinnias. The F2 generation will contain many recombinations of both seen traits and unseen traits. Since commercial zinnia seeds are bee-pollinated, a packet of field grown zinnias will contain some F1 hybrids, courtesy of the bees, so both your red zinnia and your purple-pink zinnia could be F1 hybrids between unknown parents. Not only can you not predict with certainty what their cross would produce, you also cannot predict with certainty what selfed seeds from them will produce. To make a long story short, zinnias are full of surprises. ZM

It's a Philodendron. The large "trunk" shows the scars of leaves that have formed and fallen over the years. The smaller ones are offsets which appear to have developed their own root systems and could probably be (gently) separated and moved to pots of their own. The plant in an outdoors tropical situation would use those roots to scale something - a tree stump or rock, going ever higher seeking light, and use the roots for support as well as nourishment along the way. A tribute to the tenacity of life, but it would grow better with improved light and fertilizer.

I am not real familiar with the roses you have listed except for Memorial Day. And that is a big HT. Hopfully someone will chime in who is growing the roses in pots that you have listed. You want to also look at the weight of each pot and make sure you raise them off the deck so your deck can stay dry under the pots. Each one of those pots will hold over 2cubic feet of potting mix, and they are heavy, even using plastic pots. I grow a lot of roses in pot. The majority are the smaller minis, floribundas, and shrub roses. HelpMeFind/roses is a great search site that shows growth habit, scent, etc. Good luck

I've been ws for 7+ years and generally start my perennial seeds anytime after winter solstice though mostly in late January/February. Annuals get sown in late March/early April. Most everything sprouts by midMay. I probably should have covered the jugs during some of those daily rains. With the changing weather patterns I will consider it a lesson learned and hope that we don't have another such spring for many years. Some of the jugs were "second chance" jugs, seeds that didn't sprout last year and given a second sowing to see if they might another time. Perhaps those seeds would not have sprouted this year anyway. A few of the old reliables sprouted, alcea, aquilegia, dianthus, papaver, penstemon, platycodyn. Annuals: antirrhinum, cleome, gomphrena, mirabalis, nasturtium, nicotiana, portulaca, salvia, and zinnia.