The garden is full of weeds at this time of year.  They grow everywhere in abundance and very fast.  It's hard to imagine that in less than three months this will be a dry, brown and gray landscape.  

Most of the weeds are grasses (see next photo) which, on close inspection, exhibit various morphologies.  Some are thinly rooted and tall, others spring from clumps of small difficult to unroot bulbs, and others are crab grasses with extensive underground roots.  

Mixed in with the grasses or sometimes occurring in separate patches are plants of beautiful delicacy that i've reluctant to weed-whack (is there a technical term for this?), the only way to keep the weed explosion of spring in check.  

The photo above is about twice actual scale with the flower being the size of my pinky nail.  I haven't researched the identity of this or any of the other naturally occurring plants but this one is one of possibly 30 or 40 varieties of small flowered ground creepers that appear between the months of January and May.

Although it's difficult to class these appealing plants as weeds, I have learned the hard way that many of them transform from tender green shoots into hard wiry plants often armed with ingenious weapons.  The pale lavender and cream flowers of the clover shown below (and  above in the foreground) are replaced with grenade shaped spiked seed pods as the dry season approaches and are nearly impossible to get rid of.  

I spent many hours today removing this plant (apparently a three leaf clover and possibly the White Clover Trifolium repens) and many other weeds from the geranium and iris beds and moving the last of the pile of rocks that were dumped in an inconvenient place.  I also discovered that photographing plants, at least here in greece, is much easier on a cloudy day.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifolieae