This is a story about weeds and greed and seeds. So stay tuned because it has a happy ending.

When we lived in New York, we had a tiny lawn behind the house. It took about ten minutes to mow, and it looked pretty good. Then, one day, I looked and there, in the middle of the lawn, clover. Eek! A weed! What to do? So I went and researched the Internet for what to do about my clover.

After reading a few articles about clover, I had a whole new outlook. It turns out that clover is a good thing for your lawn. It breaks up the soil, kills weeds, puts nitrogen into the earth, is drought resistant, and the bees love it.

So I decided to add more clover to my little lawn. I went to the local garden store and asked if they had any clover seed. The guy looked at me like I had asked for a package of aphids and Japanese beetles.

Turns out that many years ago, lawn seed was judged by the amount of clover seed it had. The more the better, and people were proud of their clover-filled lawns. Then, one day, a famous lawn food/herbicide company invented an all-purpose weed killer. There was only one problem. It also killed the clover. So, to fix things, they started removing clover seed from their lawn mixes and declared clover an unsightly weed (which they, fortunately, could kill). From then on, clover was considered a weed, named on most new herbicides.

Anyway, thanks to the Internet, I was able to find a company that sold clover seed - White Dutch clover is considered the best for lawns. It only grows about six to eight inches high and doesn't need much mowing. Clover seed is as fine as dust and I planted it by just throwing it in the air and letting the wind spread it.

Since moving to Virginia, I buy clover seed at the local farmers' co-op, usually about 25 pounds at a time. I've used it to control real weeds and to break up the ground after we had some construction work that left mostly clay on the surface.

The picture above shows some happy clover just after the rain. Oh, and there is one other use for clover. You can send your little granddaughter out into the field to search for four-leaf clovers. I will post a picture of one at a later date.