Georgia O' Keefe famously stated that she made her flower paintings on very large canvases because flowers weren't noticed, and to see a flower takes time, just like a friendship takes time. If we have become too busy to notice the tiny beauties around us, that goes double for common grasses, weed flowers and clovers.
Clovers are often blended with rye grass as feed for pastured livestock. Vigorous clover growth is a great indicator of honeybee health in your area, so it's always nice to see great mounds of it on the waysides of roads and landscaped developments. I planted mine as a cover crop before I started my garden. The clover was turned under feeding the soil with rich green compost.
I often use clover in my country bouquets for the farmer's market. The inclusion of clovers, as well as grasses and ditch flowers, gives them the airy freshness that just cannot be rivaled by commercial floral arrangements. Its the flowers your grandmother had in her kitchen window- or at least the nostalgic idea that she might have, because they have a timelessness to them and are always in fashion. Today I made a bouquet of just clovers. I was lucky to have found a few of the crimsons. The white ones were fading fast, but the pinks were wet and plump and in full glory this afternoon.
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
-Emily Dickenson
Clovers smell faintly and purely sweet like babies. And of course the four-leafed kind are lucky (unless you are backed-up on a highway inter-change named for one).
