Venus's Looking Glass, Millpond

One of the greatest joys in my twilight life is to make a new personal discovery, and that daily possibility is, besides the fact that I need the exercise, often what keeps me on the trail. Today I hiked down to the millpond, mostly in the hope that I'd spot old odonate friends—dragonflies and damselflies that have been curiously in short supply in many of their usual haunts—and while ode populations are still low, the wild flowers are putting on a more typical show. In the area around the millpond dam, I spotted such familiar flowers as Yarrow, Fleabane, Meadow Rue, and the first Saint John's Wort, all of which I'm on a first-name basis with. But rising out of a swatch of grasses was a newcomer. When I spotted the vivid blue color, my first thought was Bellflower, but this blossom was no bell, and the clasping round and small leaves hugging the stem were not Campanula-like, at least, not like any Campanula I knew. So, for the time being, I was happily stumped. I took lots of diagnostic pictures and, armed with that "data," cracked open the Peterson Field Guide to the Wildflowers when I got home. In short order I learned that I was looking at Venus' Looking Glass, which bears the wonderfully apt scientific name of Specularia perfoliata.  I wonder what that discovery was reflecting back on me.