I’ve noticed over time that whenever I start to accumulate three or more objects of the same ‘family’, it tends to become a collection, if not actually an obsession.
When I was but a kid, a few wrapped sugar lumps saved from a holiday trip, along with others brought back by friends and family from business trips or holidays abroad, soon developed into a full-scale hobby and a collection of ‘sugar-lump wrappers’ going into the thousands.
Teapots followed shortly afterwards and, more recently, 1950s-1960’s kitchen clocks, which now cover my kitchen walls… to name just a few of the weird and wonderful objects I’ve found myself collecting over the years.

Plants, of course, just lend themselves to being collected.
In fact, the whole history of gardening could be resumed through its plant collections and their collectors.
It combines the scientific, ‘identifying and cataloguing’ mindset with the artistic sense of blending and contrasting.

The bearded iris was just « waiting for me at the corner »…