That I Overlooked Before

June 6, 2006

And now, another genetically different, lucky edition of…

Here’s to You!

So I lift my glass and say, “Here’s to you, four leaf clovers!”

Always a pleasure to find. Five years ago, back at college, I was wandering around campus just sort of looking at some grass and clover patches. Four leaf clovers crossed my mind. Lucky items apparently. I wasn’t sure if I had ever seen one, though. I wondered if they even existed. I was muttering to myself while gazing into one clover patch. “Do four leaf clovers even exist?- Oh, wait, there’s one!”

And that was my first one that I found, May 22, 2001, my last day of final exams that semester, two days before the start of the original 100 Days of Summer, two years before my graduation day. Probably some other crap, too.

During the course of the following year, I found some more. That summer, I found one on the farm where my aunt and uncle live. I made sure to inform them they had a four leaf clover patch on their property, just in case that added any property value. The third I believe I found that September or October. Trying to remember exactly. It was around the same spot as the first one on campus. The fourth was in late November. The fifth the following February, into 2002. Another in April. These were all on campus. The first of May, an amazing thing. I found nine! I called them the “nonuplets”. Thing is, I couldn’t save them because I mistakenly put them in a ziploc bag and they rotted. Sigh. All the others are in my photo album, still green even to this day. Dry, though. Hehe. And the last one was, that’s right, May 21, the infamous day mentioned a couple weeks ago on its anniversary, and a day shy of the anniversary of the day I found the first one. Interestingly enough, I never again found another four leaf clover after that day.

Well, until five days shy of the fourth anniversary of the day, a few weeks ago. Found it at my bus stop! How about that. I missed the superstitious little things. And I’ve been finding an assload of them! Damn, man. They disappeared suddenly, and now they’re showing up again. A sign perhaps? Probably not, but whatever.

Do I think four leaf clovers are lucky? No, not really. I just think they’re cool. For the same reason I like equinoxes and solstices. No pagan or superstitious importance to me. I just like scientific phenomena. Equinoxes and solstices are involved with length of daylight at a given latitude, and Earth’s position and whatnot. Four leaf clovers? Why, I was interested in what made that fourth leaf show up in the first place.

I asked a botanist at school about it, if it was like a hereditary trait or something. He said he wasn’t sure exactly why it happened, but figured it was an environmental thing. Makes sense. The specific environment of where I found these was similar. An extra leaf would be handy to transpire more water in case of wet conditions perhaps. I looked this up on Wikipedia once, but I forget what it said, hehe. Oh, go on over there yourself if you want to know.

This has been Day 14 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 6.

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