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Nature Observation 2

For my second nature blog, I walked around campus for a bit to find a subject I liked. Since I wrote about a tree for my first nature blog, I decided to shift my focus, and look down, for my second one. I walked to one of my favorite spots on campus, which is also one of the most underrated spots in my opinion: the sundial circle right next to Ed Landreth Hall and the Walsh Performing Arts Center. I have always liked it because it is a little garden unlike most of TCU’s other beds. Various flower bushes encircle a concrete pad with a sundial painted on the floor and a small pedestal rising up bearing another little sundial. I like the circle of dense greenery speckled with color rising knee length high, sequestering off a little astronomic sanctuary. Because the spot is nestled away from most of main campus, it is also always quiet and never busy. It always feels so peaceful when I walk by to my theater history class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings.

I often look over at the aerial activity in the bushes’ atmosphere as I walk by, but today I went in for a closer look. A bee, one of the only two types of insects that I enjoy, buzzed around one bush looking for a flower to pollinate. The black and yellow fuzzball peacefully drifted around the leaves, lightly touching them. Little yellow and purple flowers spotted the otherwise densely green bush. Or at least, I think it was a bush. I could not quite tell if all the little vines were connected to one spot in the ground or if they were the result of free reign for a bunch of plants to grow into a little forest of their own. In any case, the bee had ample options to choose from, assuming the taste of that kind of flower was to his liking. There were also a couple of butterflies, the other kind of insect that I enjoy, flitting around the flowers. They looked like the classic monarch butterfly everyone is familiar with, but these were the miniature version. Black veins webbed the butterflies’ orange wings, which were only about an inch or an inch and a half in total length. They were like little pieces of paper someone had dropped, and the wind was carrying them along the flowers. 

Whereas my nature blog last week had a subject much larger than myself, this observation has much smaller content. I liked how little the flowers on the plant were. Some were yellow, and some were light purple, but all of them were the size of the pad of my thumb. Each flower was actually a cluster of twelve to fifteen even smaller flowers, each with a tiny white dot at the center. The perfect size for the bees and mini butterflies. My observation this week reminded me that the small things are as important and interesting as the large things.

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