small things

As I weight the merit of spending the weekend working on the tax return against filing an extension and going to the Green Scene, I stop to appreciate some small-scale blooms on the estate today including Dodonaea viscosa,

Pelargonium grossularioides,   
Senecio radicans,  
Pelargonium carnosum, Cynara cardunculus,

and a grass of forgotten identity in no particular order.

The hop bush is one of my favorites, its flowers usually described as "insignificant".  I bought coconut geranium years ago at a garden show and it has never failed to delight me with its fragrance as it returns from the dead clumps, or sprouts from wayward seeds, each spring; the flowers really are small for a "geranium".  String of bananas is almost done blooming now, most of its composite flowers are hanging upside down full of marigold-like seeds, which is fine since we only grow it "for its form and foliage".  The grass has been moved around the garden quite a bit, but I seem to like it in its present location and so it rewards me with abundant if hardly noticeable flowers.  The fleshy-stalk pelargonium is favored by caudiform collectors for its stalk, but the flowers should never be overlooked.

This artichoke bud is small, for an artichoke.  The form 4868 is small, for a tax form.  It is after all the small things that, when we take time to appreciate them, make our lives richer.