I remember the big (to my childhood eyes) field between the church and the Safeway on the Maryland side of beautiful, woodsy Western Avenue in DC and the clovers that dotted the grass and spread down that field. We would pick them and make a slit near the bottom of a stem with our fingernails and slide the stem of another through it, chaining them into flower necklaces that celebrated with us for the rest of the afternoon and then quietly gave way to nature.

White clovers had some of this yarn’s color at the center, with all those curled white petals above. A few were purple.

I’m sure the older girls taught the younger ones how to do this, though I mostly simply remember making them with my best friend Kathy. Those older girls would have included my older sisters–and Richard’s.

Whose cancer finally took her when her youngest was in college.

I remember, when our kids were growing up, her backyard sewn in meadow flower packets that had beautiful wildflowers blooming all summer. Cold, cold water from the mountains ran past it all in a tight stream hemmed in by squared stones set in place just so by pioneers at the beginning of the western water rights era so that their children’s children’s children could help things grow.

Her youngest will soon have a baby girl of her own.

Clover flowers in a meadow. With hopes of making chains of necklaces with the little one someday in memory of her grandmother.