Sometimes, it’s not the big moments that make life feel beautiful — it’s the small ones. The hum of a honeybee as it lands on a Black-Eyed Susan. The gentle flutter of a monarch exploring a patch of Milkweed. In a world that moves fast, these quiet, living details remind us to slow down and savor the little things that are all around us.

I’ve got this one little flower that, no matter how frustrated, tired, or stressed I am, puts a big smile on my face. And it happens to be one of the tiniest little flowers. One you’ve probably overlooked for years in your yard. It’s called Frogfruit. It’s a plant that we’ve only recently started carrying at the Nursery as we’ve expanded our native plant section and created our Homegrown National Park. But, wow, it has some pollinator power!

Although the flower is relatively new to the Nursery, it is one that I remember from way back in my childhood. I spent so much time outside as a kid. It’s part of the reason that this newsletter is named Life Lived Outside. If I were to list for you my top things I’ve done in my life, I’d bet that most of them would involve the outdoors in some way.

So as kids, you could always find my siblings and me playing in the yard, building forts, playing soccer, climbing trees, and sometimes doing yard work. And for some reason, this one little flower is one that I remember. I probably chopped it down while mowing the lawn, but I also remember it from walks along the dirt road at my grandparents’ house in Dunnellon and at my local grandparents’ property on a lake over in Carrollwood. It’s just the cutest little flower, and you’ll find it all over once you start looking. It kind of looks like a raisin with a little crown of tiny white blooms around it. It’s subtle, you could easily walk past it in a yard, so it isn’t the showiest flower, but in our native planting at the nursery, where we’ve grown a whole patch of it, there is never a shortage of bees and other pollinators going crazy feeding on the nectar and the pollen of this tiny little flower.

So small, but something that created a big memory in my head. I don’t know about you, but these tiny flowers and the pollinators they attract are just one of those simple things that puts a big smile on my face. Do you have a flower that does that for you? I’d love to hear about it.

And I hope you’ll join me this Saturday as we celebrate Florida Native Plant Month and start a Pollinator Party. At 10 am, I’m giving a seminar on attracting pollinators to your yard and will be highlighting Florida native plants, since they are superstars when it comes to starting the party. Then following the workshop, we’ll take a tour of our Homegrown National Park and talk about the movement to create pollinator corridors throughout our communities.

It’s easy to overlook them sometimes, but bees, butterflies, and all pollinators are nature’s tireless workers. They keep our gardens vibrant and our planet thriving. That is something that should make everyone smile.