An artist's eye

I love it when Pammy says to me "come outside and have a look at this" because I know old eagle-eyes has done it again. And this morning she proved once more to me that an artist's eye seems to have a built-in human macro lens for details that many of us mere mortals simply don't notice. Pictured below is what she saw, in the wall pot just outside our back door.

Blooms within blooms. To most of us the colourful spike of bracts emanating from a bromeliad is a 'flower', but one of those yellow-tipped protrusions has turned itself into a trumpet shape which has opened to reveal a pollen stalk, a real bloom, however small and humble. The green lumps at the end of other yellow arms seem to promise more blooms in the next few days. These plants are truly happy here.

This morning, I was no further than a few feet away from this pot as I tootled outside to inspect the drenched garden. We've had the mother of a wet week, our wettest July for 60 years, with 285mm (11.2 inches) of rain tumbling out of the clouds since last Tuesday.

My main concern was checking on the potential drowning victims (and fortunately there were none) but if I had bothered to stop and just have a good, old-fashioned look around at all the residents here in Amateur Land, I might have seen what Pammy spotted in the wall pots.

The bromeliads are under full cover, didn't get a drop of water on them all week, but they were surrounded by moisture and mist – and maybe the soundtrack of constant rain helped as well?

"Hey, am I back in the rainforest where I belong?" the bromeliad asked itself. "Yep, yippee!"