Miracle Grow

Talking to P. McG this week I got to use the phrase "in catechumenical clover" which pleased me no end. I like clover. Being in it, or just talking about it.

There is a small clump of clover in the parking lot outside of the newspaper.

I walk by it every day and it gives me great comfort. Growing up, my backyard was covered in clover from the first blushes of spring through mid-summer. Now that I live in Texas with our once-annual explosion of bluebonnets the memory of months of unassuming flowers popping up everywhere just delights me. There were other flowers too--in my backyard I mean-- violets and buttercups and lily of the valley which overtook the yard after my grandmother planted for her mother who --like her-- was named Lillian.

I wasn't allowed to pick the lily of the valley and the buttercups and violets didn't really hold up after being picked, so I'd sit on the ground, happily ensconced in my own imagination, plucking the clover, making chains and mats and occasionally trying to eat one just to see what it tasted like (my idea that it would taste like honey did not hold up to rigorous testing).

I'm always rooting for the parking lot clover clump. Every Tuesday the skinny Mexican men in torn pants and face masks mow it down and yet, by Friday there it is again in full clumpy glory with shorn stumps hidden by new growth looking fat and happy as a country friar.

Here endeth the lesson. There are plenty-eth of 'em.

this post was brought to you by two days of rain and a goodly amount of dirt