Lost in the Overgrowth

Bramblings
By Becky Nelson
I tried to make it through no-mow-May without mowing any lawns, but I was not successful. There is something about an unkempt lawn in front of a business that crawls under my skin, especially when the business is my own. I did, however, let the grass get a good 6 or 8 inches tall before I mowed, trying to leave whatever wildflowers were in bloom for the pollinators. There isn’t much around for bees and other buzzers around the farm before apple blossoms, and there is a big gap of time between apple blossoms and blueberries. We don’t have a huge blueberry patch, so the pickings are kind of skinny until the raspberry blossoms open. Field crops are not even in play until sometime in late June or July, so it is important to leave some flowers for the bees.

I paid particular attention to the flowers this time when I cut the grass. I mowed a lot more than grass. Stopping every time I saw a cluster of tiny flowers, I picked several tiny bouquets of different blooms. Most were well tucked into the mass of green grass and would have gone completely unnoticed if I hadn’t purposefully looked for blossoms. I actually counted fifteen different varieties in my little corner of the lawn.

There were several large blooms along the edges of the mowed area. The lupine that had gone wild was in full bloom, as were the daisies, some sort of aster, buttercups and two colors of iris growing wild. I have planted iris at home, but these are either wildflowers or some escapees from somewhere else, one a pale blue and violet and one white. Besides these lovely and showy flowers, there are lots of little blooms hiding in the vegetation of the lawn. I don’t even know the names of all that I found, but I saw red clover, white clover, wild strawberry, cinq foil, blue-eyed grass, bloodroot and orange hawkweed that I knew the names. There were several others that I have no idea about…purple, white and yellow.

One of the tiniest of flowers was amazing when I zoomed in for a camera shot. The tiny little flower was almost imperceptible in the grass, but when I zoomed in I saw the most amazing patterns of purple, lime green and pink…an absolutely beautiful miniature specimen. With a bit of research, I found that the beautiful little treasure was a variety of speedwell.

If I had not taken a few seconds away from my lawnmowing chore, I never would have seen these little flowers to appreciate their stunning beauty. It is easy for beauty to be lost in the overgrowth. We have trouble seeing the positive and the beautiful in our everyday grind, with the news full of atrocity and horror and our minds swamped with all manner of things that plug us up and shut us down to the pretty and amazing things in life.

Next time you are sitting in a lawn chair or mowing the grass, take a moment to look for the unseen. It just might brighten your day.