SUSIE MALLETT

My visitors today

Sunday 17 May 2009

Natural observation

"Kleeblatt"- Friday's catch!
Observing nature

While walking home from work on Friday (the 15th) I found seventeen four-leafed clovers and three five-leafed clovers!

That brings this year’s tally to about thirty, which is well below last year’s total of over one hundred. 2008 was my best year ever for the amount of four-or-more-leafed clovers that I have collected but it was in 2002 that I found the clover leaf with the biggest number of leaves. It had eight!
I don’t go searching for them I just happen upon them, but if I find one I do look for a second on the same plant. More often than not there can be three or four more in the same place.

I was fourteen when I found my first four-leaf clover.I was cleaning my teeth in a field. We were camping in at Corfe Castle. With my head bent low, to avoid white stripes of toothpaste on my button down shirt and first-ever pair of Levi jeans, I “spotted” it.

I have been “spotting” them ever since. Or maybe they spot me

Maybe I do look at the grass more than most people, I am fascinated by the miniature world that exists below my feet. I like nothing better than lying on my tummy, face close to the grass watching the comings and going in what appears to be a jungle.

I really don’t go hunting for clovers. The pattern of a clover patch is different when there is a four-leafed leaf amongst it. It is this change of pattern that I notice. This may have something to do with my training in the visual arts or quite probably more to do with why I trained in the visual arts. I was observing oddities like this long before I went to art school.

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