It’s the little things that matter
Iam a collector of things, for better or worse, and over the years my kitchen window sill has become the place where I collect interesting little things, mostly related to plants.
There are three small matching red glass vases in which there is always some small thing rooting or blooming. If I break a piece off of a plant, it goes in a red vase filled to the brim with water. It is amazing how long things can survive in a vessel of water, as long as they have sprouted roots and have a little light to live by.
There is the littlest glass jar that I have ever seen that was dug up from the yard at some point, and a little ceramic planter that I bought at some festival one year from some student artists. It held a succulent plant, but that didn’t last long. Sadly, I have yet to keep anything alive in it. I sometimes transfer one of those small rooted cuttings to it, hoping to watch the plant graduate and mature, but this never seems to work.
Then there is the tiny pitcher that my daughter made for me when she was a wee little thing herself. I think that her dad helped her make it for me for Mother’s Day at one of those paint-your-own ceramics places.
The year ‘01 is painted very small on the bottom along with her initials, so she would have been just about 2½ when she made it. The pitcher stands about 2 inches tall and is dappled with multiple colors, just the way that you imagine a 2-year-old would paint, and it is one of my most prized possessions.
It is amazing how something so tiny can mean so much, isn’t it?
This time of year, there are so many little things emerging that are worthy of consideration, but because they are so small, they are often easy to overlook.
Every spring I begin to see the tiny wildflowers emerging in my yard, along the roadside, and in the large city lawn down the road, where I walk my dogs each day. If you are paying attention, it is fascinating to watch how the world gently explodes under our feet as the season changes.
I have counted over 30 species of small blooming plants over the years that can be found in the lawn down the road. It makes me sad each time they mow, because every day that we walk there, I watch as new things bloom and little tiny bugs feast on their various nectars and pollens.
It is truly the sweetest thing to watch these critters flit from one flower to the next, partaking of the bounty that they offer.
Part of the plethora are two kinds of dead nettles. One is called henbit, and each spring we enjoy watching our honeybees bring pouches of bright red pollen from its tiny purple blooms. Yes, different flowers produce different colors of pollen, and believe it or not, each of those different pollens offer bees different nutrients that are important to their health and wellness.
To watch that bounty mowed over, just for the sake of a visually flat and even lawn, is just heartbreaking. The big picture of it doesn’t change that much; I’d bet that the folks driving by haven’t even noticed they mowed, but the small world that lives there is devastated.
Now, you might be one of those people who think those pesky little bugs that are relying on those tiny little plants for their survival aren’t terribly important, anyway, but I’m here to tell you that they are just as important to the balance of the natural world as you are, and in some cases probably more so.
Here is an example. When you think of mistletoe, you either think of a Christmas kiss or a parasitic evergreen plant with the power to take down trees. It was long believed that eradicating mistletoe was the key to saving forests, but an experiment in Australia proved that this lowly plant is more important to the health of a forest than they could have imagined.
The area in which all of the mistletoe was removed actually lost a third of its bird population, including those that feed on insects, and lost a notable number of mammals and reptiles, including those that were ground feeders and seemingly completely unconnected to the tree-dwelling plant.
It’s the little things that matter, even when we think they are completely insignificant.
A couple of years ago, I collected some of those tiny blooming things and made an itty bitty bouquet to fit in the wee little pitcher that Ramsey made for me. I used white and yellow clovers, birdeye speedwell, pink sorrel, yellow wood sorrel, bluets and some other tiny pink blossomed stems that I can’t identify.
It was so very adorable and I enjoyed seeing it above the kitchen sink as I worked, reminding me to remember the importance of the little things.
I occasionally listen to a podcast titled, “The Science of Happiness” and they recently featured a woman who took a challenge to post a photo of something from nature every day. She turned it into an opportunity to spend a little time each day in the same little area of her backyard, where she watched as the little things of nature revealed themselves to her. The intimate understanding that she described as she paid attention to the insects and plants that she observed was exactly like how I enjoy watching the small things along our walks each day.
As the days get warmer and we find ourselves drawn to the outdoors, I hope that we can all take a minute to get our toes in the grass and our eyes on the tiny world that resides there.
It is amazing what we can learn from these little things that matter more than we realize.