Nasturtiums - Terry speaks

My father has always been a crusader for nasturtiums. He is the Johnny Appleseed of the world of nasturtiums, harvesting seeds every year and packaging them up in homemade, hand-colored seed packets and sending them off to relatives around the country. Last year my seeds only sprouted tiny little lonesome nasturtiums, but this year I have a whole mound of them starting to appear. My children, my siblings, my friends have all planted dad's seeds and we all try to remember to send him pictures of our successes and even of our failures. My father has loved flowers as long as I've known him. I recently came across a picture of myself at about 3 or 4 years old surrounded by his flowers, and didn't realize that my own love of flowers must have started at that moment. My daughter loves flowers and my two sons both garden with extreme passion and blog about it! Oh that all the things I wanted to pass down were so enduring! When my parents moved to a retirement community in Arizona, my father defied the rules and planted and tended beautiful nasturtiums for many years, until the management finally required that he stop. Is the love of flowers or gardening hard wired in the family genes? Thanks, dad, for the seed packets -- and the genes!