Sweet alyssum is a dainty little fella. Growing low to the ground, branching out over the ground. It does have some nectar, hence the enjoyment of the occasional bug or bird stopping by.

Although I have never heard the flower’s name before today, a lovely poet named Amy Lowell knew of it. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926, one year after she passed away at the young age of 51.

The Garden by Moonlight
By Amy Lowell

A black cat among roses,
Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon,
The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock.
The garden is very still,
It is dazed with moonlight,
Contented with perfume,
Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies.
Firefly lights open and vanish
High as the tip buds of the golden glow
Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet.
Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises,
Moon-spikes shafting through the snowball bush.
Only the little faces of the ladies' delight are alert and staring,
Only the cat, padding between the roses,
Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern
As water is broken by the falling of a leaf.
Then you come,
And you are quiet like the garden,
And white like the alyssum flowers,
And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies.
Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies?
They knew my mother,
But who belonging to me will they know
When I am gone.

Published in "Pictures of the Floating World" 1919.