These tiny flowers, Veronica peducularis would be perfect for sunny lawns, which is in fact where I discovered them, on a mowed slope of a nearby drainage ditch behind a little shopping plaza. Amongst the feathers of some avian victim were these tiny little flowers, which I returned to photograph and sketch, the former more successfully than the latter.

f1.7 1/100sec, one-plus 5T phone with a clip on macro lens^[1]

While I was trying to figure out what they were (which proved to be much easier than I thought) I read that the plant typically gets to be 6–8" high. However, it does perfectly well mowed nearly to the ground, too:)

cell phone w attachment f1.7, 1/167sec

Now here's the same subject shot with my DSLR^[2] It's a more informative photograph, and certainly has a greater depth of field and more sharpness. Probably truer colour as well. Nevertheless, from a purely photographic point of view, I prefer my cell phone effort, taken with a 30USD clip on lens:)

50 mm zuiko macro lens, E620, f5.6, 1/125sec, exp bias 0, 26mar2020.

Sketching these flowers and their leaves was challenging for me. Though the plant adapted just fine to being mowed within an inch of its life, this meant all of its leaves tended to be crammed right at the tip of the stem, making it difficult, even with my special close-up glasses^[3] to parse how the leaves were arranged. Eventually, after staring at it for awhile in frustration, I eventually figured out that the leaves were arranged more-or-less radially, like the petals on a rose (or peony) a situation which I've wrestled with numerous times over the years.

leatherbound sketchbook...

But nothing I could do could properly capture the flowers, and I gave up trying to paint even a sketch before I got to the reproductive organs. Nevertheless, I thought these would make a nice mucha-esque type border, because they're basically circular, and thus would fill the space.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.