Little things in the shadows

It’s the little things that make up the big picture of nature. When we look across the woodlands, back yards and flower gardens, do we see the understory, figuratively and literally? In a reverse of the old saying: Sometimes we can’t see the trees for the forest. Yes, sometimes we should get lost in the details of tiny scenes of beauty.

I was taking photos of trilliums one morning when the shadow of a fern appeared on the flower’s white petals. I say “appeared,” for it was seemingly suddenly there, or so I thought. But it was there all along, begging me to see it, and I didn’t notice until I studied the photo composition in the camera lens.

The photo became more than that of a trillium in bloom. And though I often avoid direct sunshine in nature photography, here it worked, bursting the greens of the fern out of the darkness of the forest floor, with the red of another blooming flower in sharp contrast of the black backdrop.

We have to train ourselves to see, for nature truly does conceal its mysteries, especially its small mysteries. And so, as spring greens toward summer, what can we look for as we hike along a woodland trail or survey the back yard? There have been bumblebees in our herb garden, but until I look closely, I have no idea what sweetness they might be pursuing in early June. Lungwort? I will look.

I see white-throated sparrows in the front yard, and I know they must have a nest in the bushes next to the house. Maybe I can see their cup-like nest, only inches off the ground, with inch-long, pale blue eggs distinctively marked with blotches of reddish brown and lavender.

Is that a frog’s eyes just above the pond surface? A toad flattened out in the mulch? Ladybug beetles on hostas? Spittlebug in the green tansies? What are those dainty blossoms of soft hues on bushes every direction I turn? Oh, there’s a caterpillar on the underside of a milkweed’s emerging leaf.

What am I seeing? What am I missing?