Self-published Black-eyed Susans

A new patch of rudbeckia I did not plant is blooming beneath the dogwood branch where Mr & Mrs. Housewren perch outside their front door.

In years past I would have wondered how such a healthy patch could have grown there without my initiating it. More likely I would have considered them weeds not part of my garden design, and pulled them long before they could have bloomed. Now, after almost two years of backyard observation, and a dawning awareness of my miniscule effect on this tiny part of the earth we call "ours," I am grateful to the housewrens for planting them thus. They are brown-eyed beauties, doing their work of regeneration with or without me, in cooperation with the wrens.

Remains my question---why the beauty? That is to say---I recognize that the beauty of the black-eyed susan is not for the purpose of dazzling me. I'm quite happy to be dazzled by her, but she would look like she looks whether or not I or any of my fellow homo sapiens were here to appreciate her. Why is that? It's a question that begs the bigger ones. dkm