May Flowers Big and Small May 2, 2016

Today I am linking with-

Today's Flowers hosted by Denise

Macro Monday 2 hosted by Gemma and Mystical Magical Teacher

In a Vase on Monday hosted by Cathy

I Heart Macro hosted by Laura

When photographing my Japanese Maples for Foliage Follow-up last month, I took notice of their tiny flowers, which I usually overlook.

I even cut some flowers and foliage, which make an unseasonable fall impression-

The flowers are now forming seed pods, and the formerly orange-tinged Amber Ghost has become a paler shade of white.

Adding to my list of flowering carpets, a favorite little lawn flower is Bellis perennis, which I obtained by digging up a few from a parking lot soon to be paved.

It looks pretty in the lawn where it has to fight with the grasses-

 But does even better on the inhospitable gravel driveway where it shines for its drought tolerance-

Another carpet that basically only flowers a little in spring, but is a marvelously tough ground cover for dry shade and spreads wonderfully, always looking neat, is hardy Geranium macrorrhizum-

All this came from a single plant that spread all by itself, under a Bigleaf Maple!  Never gets watered through our dry season!  It will not do as well in sun.

And now for my Monday vase, answering Cathy's challenge to find flowers for a vase to enjoy, my Lily of the Valleys have started to bloom, and smell wonderful, so I couldn't resist plonking some in a vase with some remaining Forget-Me-Nots and a few of those rascally Herb Roberts.

I also, while out weeding every day, notice some very tiny "weed" flowers, which have a mesmerizing effect on me and compelled me to make a tiny vase, compared also with the larger tame version of the Forget-Me-Nots.  Some members of the Borage family have mystical powers to spread themselves far and wide.

The plate in this photo is from my original china my parents gave me when I got married, It is Lenox 'Melissa'.  My father's grandmother was a Lenox, but the business was run by male members of the family so was not part of his inheritance.  Lenox is my father's middle name.  A Yankee from New Jersey married a Southern belle from South Carolina, my mother, imagine that.  But the strange part is that both of their fathers were born in South Carolina.

The tiny white flowers tend to be highly invasive and make a tiny ground cover fine in the grass but seem to threaten some of my plants in the garden-

 The tiny flashes of deep blue are pretty, I haven't noticed any bad effects from this one, not as vigorous or invasive in the lawn-

A comparison of the tiny wild Forget-Me-Nots with the regular ones,

And regular FMN on the lower left compared with the slightly smaller and less varied in color flowers of another famous Borage family flower, Brunnera, which is very well-behaved but can self-sow-

FMN can make quite a flowering carpet,  which can actually act to slow down other weeds for a while in spring-

 but eventually turns into a mildewed mess here, and the tiny seed pods have a sticky quality from tiny hairs that cling to clothes and gloves, so this year I am waging full scale war on them and bagging all the plants and flowers I can find in hopes there won't be many next year.

Another extremely invasive flowering carpet is Herb Robert, though I have to say it is known for being a medicinal herb and also can suppress other weeds very well with its dense growth and perhaps a little allelopathy thrown in, so it can transform some weedy areas of my 2 acres into this-

And has very cute little flowers-

  I hope you have made fewer mistakes than I have in planting invasive plants out of ignorance.   What plants have become problems for you?    -Hannah