Embracing Clover

Clover enhances life

Dear Readers,

More than ten years ago a large oak tree fell on our house, which we had lived in for about six months. After huge trucks and heavy equipment removed the tree, the expanse of grass comprising our front lawn was rutted and muddy. “We can replace that damage with mulch,” my husband Gary said, but at the time I missed all the green, so he created a small flower garden where the tree had been and then spent days tamping down the ruts and planted more grass.

Over the years I stared at all that green and wondered why I had missed that non-native blandness. I fell in love with birds, and they preferred our back yard, which had woods instead of grass. I didn’t want to tell Gary about my wonderings given all the work he’d done to make the lawn green again, but eventually he started creating small garden patches to hold flowers, and then a larger one with trees. I would get excited every time he did this, so these patches grew. He put out bird baths and moved our bird feeders from the deck to the front yard.

Last year, he planted clover in a huge section of the lawn in front of our house. Many believe that clover is a weed. People in our neighborhood spend lots of money trying to rid their yards of clover, but then we planted it. This year, he planted a second kind of clover.

We no longer have that long expanse of groomed green grass, but we now have abundant bird life: not just the robins and cardinals and tufted titmice and bluebirds (my favorite!) and blue jays that have lived nearby for years, but we even saw a scarlet tanager last month, to my shock: the scarlet tanager became number 167 on my “life list” of birds. We’ve had salespeople ring our doorbell at least twice in the past month trying to sell us lawn chemicals, but we explain to them that we enjoy the native ecosystem our clover helped create.

Embracing clover has larger implications. Before we moved here, we were a military family, so whenever we bought houses we made sure to select features that would be easily salable in the near future, like four bedrooms and neutral colored carpet. When I contracted my two cancers in 2020, I determined that if I lived, I wanted to move back to Arizona. I still hope to retire there someday, but now that I am two years out from those dreadful diagnoses, I am embracing the life I have: a lawn full of clover isn’t what a realtor would recommend, but it’s home. I’m embracing my church, which is now smaller (including a smaller budget) and being bivocational. We have challenges, but St. David’s is creative, innovative, beautiful, and full of life, like a yard bursting with clover and bees and dragonflies and, this time of year, fireflies. Two years out from lung cancer, I believe I’m going to live, and I’m embracing all of it, even though much of it is messy. Clover may look “messy” to some, but I believe it’s beautiful, and clover definitely enhances life.

I turned in my book manuscript four weeks ago, which was a huge rush. I’ve heard that finishing a book can be a bit of a letdown, but that has not happened to me yet, perhaps because I know that I still have developmental edits, copyedits, and proofreading in front of me, as well as possibly creating an index, depending on what the editor thinks. I’m supposed to get the manuscript back for developmental edits at the beginning of July, and in the meantime I’ve been working on a new proposal with my friend Samantha. Not ready to talk about it yet, but we’re excited.

What has May been like for you? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Blessings, Elizabeth

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What I’m Reading:

Sophfronia Scott, Love’s Long Line. Sophfronia spoke at St. David’s quarterly book club meeting earlier this month about The Seeker and the Monk. Her son attended Sandy Hook Elementary at the time of the shootings there and lost a close friend then, and she writes about that in an essay in this collection. I am having trouble listening to politicians and other clergy during the horrible times that we are experiencing with recent shootings in Buffalo, Laguna Woods, and Uvalde, but hers is a perspective I do not want to miss. I also picked up This Child of Faith, which she referred to in the book club when we asked about her faith journey.

Trashlands. Dystopian novel. LOVED it.

You Had Me at Pet-Nat. Memoir —listened to it on audiobook. Interesting information about natural wine, which I’d never heard of before this book.

The Secrets We Share. Thriller/mystery.

Tell Me Everything. SO good—a fiction writer moonlighting as a private eye on a huge case which dredges up her own childhood demons.

Madman in the Woods. Watched a Netflix series about the Unabomber and then picked this one up, written by a woman who lived next door to him in Montana as a child. Interesting perspective. Also listened to this one on audiobook and it was read by the author, which I far prefer to books read by actors. (I realize many people disagree and I respect your opinion. Please respect mine.)

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What I’m Writing:

All sermons this month! Here you go:

Easter 3, May 1: Ananias

Easter 4, May 8 Dorcas (and Sister Helen)

Easter 5, May 15: Love

Easter 6, May 22 Lydia and Visions