Small Splendors in the Grass

When the lawn gets long and disheveled (I don't like to mow often), there is a bonus: small wildflowers blooming in profusion amid the grass. I can think of dandelions as wildflowers rather than weeds because they are truly quite lovely when blooming in great golden sweeps across lawns and fields, as they are now. Since my lawn is mostly weeds––witch grass (or maybe it's crabgrass, but they call it witch grass around here) and a variety of other plants, with very little actual grass––I don't worry about dandelions; their leaves are green, after all.

The warm yellow of the dandelion flowers sings loudly next to the more delicate purple of violets.

The violets can seem grand next to the tiny flowers of wild strawberries.

There are also tiny delicate white violets scattered about.

Big white, soft, cloud-like masses appear in a couple of places in the lawn, made up of fluffy-headed flowers nodding on gray-green stems. I don't know what they're called, but one of my readers can probably let us know. I took these photos yesterday and this morning, knowing I'd be mowing and many of the flowers' heads would be lopped off. But they are survivors and many will pop back up again soon; some of the dandelions even manage to grow low enough to evade the cutting blades. Now my lawn looks very orderly, though not quite as festive.