My collection

A couple of weeks ago I was out at dinner with a friend, and the conversation turned to the things we collect. First choice for both of us would be more horses, but we were temporarily leaving that expensive little hobby aside. Anyway, turns out Jaime collects four leaved clover. “Wow”, I said, “where do you find them?” Jaime: “They’re everywhere, I see them all the time”.

That was somewhat surprising to me since I never ever see even one, despite sometimes scanning the clover for minutes at a time while lazing in a paddock with the ponies.

Not JC. Photo from cliparthut.com

That percolated for a while. Then, as I was weeding the Jerusalem Cherry out of the orange grove (yup, we inherited a plantation of 31 orange trees. Orange juice anyone?), I suddenly realised I was getting so good at spotting that damned JC that I could look across a veritable sea of weeds, and pick out one single shoot of the stuff. It was both a blessing and a curse, because, having spotted that next plant, I couldn’t walk away and leave it. Must exterminate! And that my friends is how I ended up spending perhaps four hours over two days crouched under orange trees, weeding.

So now I understand how four leaved clover is ‘everywhere’. Train the eye and it can pick out the queen on a frame of 500 bees, a four leaved clover in a sward of grass, and a single stem of JC in a sea of green at dusk.

So now I collect JC, and one day very soon I’m going to burn my entire collection. Won’t that be FUN?

My orange grove efforts were kindly (and heavily) supplemented by Favorite Stepson and Forbearing Husband.