PATCH OF CLOVER OFFERS PEACE AND CONTENTMENT

One of the simple pleasures of June for me is to sit in a sunny patch of clover and observe the world, imbibing through every pore, as Thoreau would say, the sights, sounds and smells, feeling textures of leaves and grasses and perhaps a fallen bird feather or floating piece of cottonwood lint.

I am fortunate to have such patches in both my back yard and across the street in the park. The park patch I only stroll through, enjoying the inimitable fragrance of the clover. The back yard patch is for sitting, on the ground, so as to be closer to the sweet perfume, the good earth and the living things around me.

If all other distracting sounds are quiet, one can actually hear the faint hum of the many bees that flit from clover blossom to clover blossom. They tip the perfume cup, spilling its contents, as they both alight and take off from the little white buttons of blooms.

Press the grasses apart and you are apt to find an assortment of beetles and bugs that make a hasty retreat at such disturbance of their green canopy. Sometimes one may find a moist worm that has come up from his earthen home to get a more plentiful supply of oxygen. Such excursions for them are dangerous for their infinitesimal stirring of the grass does not go unnoticed by the robins' eyes.

An abundance of blue jays decorate the premises this year. A good hatch. Their bright blue and white precisely designed feathers blend well with the green of the grass and trees and the pink and red of the roses and poppies.

Unseen crickets are fiddling in the warm grasses at the base of fence posts or around the foundations of buildings. I eagerly await the first cricket songs and enjoy them all summer and fall. They seem to say, "Let go of the worries of the day. Things are moving along according to The Plan.

Without moving from my seat in the sun, I can pick enough clover blossoms to make a chain long enough to go over my head. Fastening the chain together might pose a problem unless you're lucky enough to have a bit of string in your pocket which I usually do, left over from tying up hollyhocks and chamomile to a center stake to keep them upright. The string unusually smells of mint for I pocket a sprig or two every time I pass by the mint bed just for the smell of it!

Try as I might, with the help of my beetle book, there are many beetles I can't identify. No great wonder. There are over 12,000 species in the United States alone. One would think, though, that like birds of a feather flocking together, beetles of a back yard would bundle together.

Once, when parting the grass to see what I could find, I gasped in astonishment for there, surely, was Edgar Allen Poe's Gold Bug. Prettiest little fellow I ever did see, shinier than my wedding band. I decided to trap him, cage him, show him off. I reached down tenderly to lift him up and what did he do but lift those gold wing guards, rev up the inner wings and take off hastily. Shucks.

Knowing, now, about those wing guards, I'm content to just watch the beetles scramble in the grass if I discover their homes.

On a nearby tree two squirrels spiral up in a gray blur and then down again. If I sit long enough Mother Rabbit hops out from under the big cedars where she has raised her family, safe from the lawn mower. Ground feeding birds come closer and closer. I wonder if I'll ever get one to eat some seeds out of my hand. I carry seeds in another pocket, just in case. Maybe some day a gold bug will crawl over the toe of my shoe and stop long enough to say some sort of bug "Hello." If that be the case, I'll try to keep the robins away and count it just another summertime blessing on a peaceful, sweet smelling afternoon.

REJOICE!