These gorgeous sky-blue flowers would be garden treasures if they were a little bigger. They are tiny enough that many of us hardly even notice them in our lawns and sidewalk cracks. Veronica persica is a European import, like almost all our lawn weeds.
Lesser Periwinkle, Myrtle, Cemetery Vine—this creeper has many names. It’s one of the first things to bloom in the spring. It can be invasive, but it is a very tidy and polite invader.
Purple Dead-Nettle (Lamium purpureum) growing from the stone wall under a railroad overpass at the back of the South Side Flats. In this sheltered position, it was already blooming in early March.
