Yesterday I picked a white clover flower and smelled it. I hadn’t done that in a while. A long while. I highly recommend it, if, like me, it’s been a while for you. Just an ordinary clover, wonderful fragrance.
Then this morning I pulled out the weeds around our few and struggling succulents beside the sidewalk and the grass there that’s extra lush because fed on the abundant rain we had in January and March. I started weeding yesterday, finished today. Lots of weeds. Often I think how much attention it takes not to, with the weed, also pull up a plant from a blown poppy seed that’s grown into an orange flower. This morning, again, a tenacious weed was in the exact same spot with a gently rooted poppy, bright as the sun. I had to be so careful not to bring the poppy up with the weed. There’s a lesson there to me.
Sean cut the grass and I weeded, and the front yard benefited and now looks like someone lives here who cares deeply about flowers.
After weeding, I walked to the marsh. Thinking I haven’t looked for 4 leaf clovers in so long. The weather was the kind that is the reason the word “perfect” exists. I was walking down the sidewalk and enjoying the blue sky thinking how my mom often says I am good at finding 4 leaf clovers. I’m very happy to be known to her as good at that.
Beside the sidewalk near a park, I bend to look. Cars are whizzing by. Just looking is a joy. It feels true self connecting. I did this so often as a kid, before so much in life had happened. Just looking is great, I think, and yet, I also think, Finding one would be super.
I’m doing this, bending to the 3-leaved green, much chopped in places by a lawn mower, when I heard a voice, “Are you okay?” I’d seen a fit woman in her 40s wearing a shirt advertising a race on it and running down the sidewalk toward me. “Are you okay?” sounds like she’s asked that before, as if she might be a doctor. In a moment, I stand up, considered how I look with my silver hair and beat up, silvering favorite jeans.
How kind, I thought, answering, “Yes,” then thought to add, “Looking for 4 leaf clovers,” now face-to-face with her, still running.
Also, how interesting that looking for 4 leaf clovers is so uncommon.
Not finding any, I went to another park, trusting my gut, where I thought I might find more chances to spot a four leaf. In a couple of minutes, I had, in fact, finding two almost beside each other. I put them between two leaves and into my back pocket, carefully pressed and held together with an old receipt also in my back pocket and that I wrapped around the two leaves holding the clovers.
The secrets I decided to finding 4 leaf clovers are these:
- Remembering to look.
- Enjoying seeing all of the 3 leaf clovers and their beauty. Aka enjoying looking. Being in the green.
- Stopping looking for 4 leaf clovers as you’re looking. Just glance over the patch. You’ll find one! Maybe two!
Peace to everyone.