Summer Snowflake

Queen Anne’s lace is blooming now, another sign of mid-summer here in Pennsylvania. When you get as close for a photo as I did for this one this morning, you can see these are pretty complex little flowers. In my photo, only the flowerets on the outside of the bloom are fully out. The rest are still closed. To me, the close up resembles a snowflake in both its complexity and color.

It’s also a bit like a mandala or, perhaps, nature’s own maze. Whenever you think you’ve seen all there is to see, suddenly there’s another layer to it. Each "flower" is actually made up of many separate tiny stalklets, and on each little stalk is an array of individual blooms. Yet, when I’m not this close. I think of each as a single flower, instead of what must be thousands of little tiny flowers.

Nature’s complexity seems limitless, and even the tiniest and simplest of things is far more complex than we usually notice. But it’s always there, if we take the time to see.