how does your garden grow

First appreciated by the doyenne Nag on the Lake—with the interesting disclaimer that this is in fact not the first blossom in microgravity—this image of a zinnia in space is pretty inspiring and marks at least a symbolic step towards making interplanetary voyages self-sustaining.
Not only does the absence of gravity to hold down soil and define up and down present particular challenges so too did apparently the bureaucracy that accompanies growing a flower on the International Space Station. Things were looking rather bleak for the plants until the gardener decided to break with the established protocol dictated by Mission Control and care for them as you would terrestrial counterparts and took the plants outside of the laboratory and into the station’s cupola to bask in the natural light of the Sun.