Oxalis 'Silverado'

Garden Meditation

This morning I perched on the low wall surrounding the new shade garden and 'practiced' (as practitioners say) a 10-minute meditation. It's a new thing I'm trying and it was remarkably easy. I think being in the garden was the key, in a cool, breezy spot. There was plenty of wordlessness here to which I could a-tune   in that simultaneous inward and outward listening mode. We'll see if I find the promised magical transformation. Every meditation needs an intention, and mine was to open myself to the beauty of Nature.

After meditation I noticed that the Oxalis regnelii 'Silverado' (Silverado Shamrock) was doing quite well. I bought these last year from Plant Delights online but  didn't 'do' the garden last fall. I managed to keep them alive, if stretched, over the winter. By their May planting I didn't know if they had enough strength left to survive.

I've never seen Oxalis roots. Fascinating little fleshy fingers seemingly composed of pinkish scales. Today, just 6 weeks later, the two plants have filled in nice large mounds and I see a pair of leaflets sprouting quite apart from the parent groups. Is that a scary sign?

The light was dappled, so I ran for the new camera and macro lens. I need to practice with this baby! So here we go, this blossom cropped from the full plant shot below...something you can do when you have a lot of pixels!

Speaking of pixels, I'm still amazed at the detail this 100mm Macro lens will deliver. I bought this plant because I loved the silvery mottled splash in the center of it's heart-shaped leaves. In the final image below, I can see the finest blue and pink fairy dust that is this leaf's surface. I hope it will show up in the smaller web-sized image.