18 April 2012 - The little things

Some guy wrote a book called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff...and it's all small stuff. His premise is that if you let the small stuff go, it won't take over your life and you will find inner peace.


That might work for some people, but I like the small stuff. And I must admit that the small stuff, the little things give me inner peace. And not only do I like the small stuff, it gives me great pleasure to photograph it. Spring is the perfect time of year for small stuff. Buds swell, tiny leaflets appear. If you really look, you can see miniscule flowers on some shrubs. 


I found a tiny spiderweb tucked away in a crevice. It wasn't much bigger than a silver dollar, but it had just rained, and the web had caught some rain drops. 

How gorgeous is this? 

And if you look very closely, you can see the reflection of my camera in every little drop. 

 Another one of my (many) little obsessions are lichens. Lichens can be so small and so easily overlooked, but if you look really close they are minute gardens! 

Here is a patch of lichen on a rock.  You could cover all the lichen in this picture with two fingers.  So easy to miss.

 But wait. Look at this amazing small stuff!

I have been walking every day. Granted it is only around my neighborhood, but there are all kinds of opportunities to find  wonderful little things. 

Right now the trout lilies are just starting to bloom. These little beauties are only 4 to 5 inches high at most, and I mean the entire plant.

There was no way I could walk by and not take a picture.  


Guess you would not be surprised to hear that a car pulled over and the driver asked if I was okay. 

Other small things that delight me are juxtapositions, such as these redbud blossoms pooled on an asphalt driveway after a rain. 
















 In my own yard the wind anemones are blooming. Again, they are tiny little plants whose blooms are bigger than the plant. You can see how tiny they really are next to the serendipity of the snail shell and how the quarter-sized blooms overwhelm the foliage.