Four-leaf clover

This morning, Miriam made her goal of running a 10-minute mile. We'll see if she ever runs again (I'm sure she will, though she claims she won't), but at least she can finish her psychology class now since she achieved her goal. The purpose of the assignment wasn't necessarily to achieve the goal...but to go through the process of setting a goal and working on a goal long enough to see some progress.

Benjamin and I ran 5 miles, with our second mile at a 9:41 (and a pace of 10:30 overall). We deviated from our usual running route, which took us by a lovely tree in full bloom not too far from our house.

We are lucky that "stinky pear" season is so short-lived down here. It's pungent for a few weeks in late February and early March, but by now the Bradford pear blossoms have mostly been torn from the branches by the breeze, and they're leafing out in blissful, scentless green.

So the beautiful tree Benjamin and I ran past was not a stinky, ol' pear tree. It was some sort of ornamental cherry tree.

Later in the afternoon Rachel wanted to go for a walk (along with Phoebe (who was super grumpy because she had just given herself a nosebleed (from dig, dig, digging for gold) and Miriam). I told the girls I wanted to walk past this tree so I could enjoy it a little more, instead of just...running past it. So that's what we did.

It hangs over the sidewalk and is just lovely. 

We stood around and admired the tree, smelled its blossoms, picked up the fallen petals and threw them in the air so they could snow down around us (you can see at Phoebe's feet the whole bouquet she picked while out on our walk—dandelions, henbit, dead nettle, camellia petals, violets, and other things).

Suddenly Miriam dropped down in the embarrassingly narrow strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road. For reference, this is how much of a "boulevard" (as I know it as) I grew up considering "normal."

(This picture is from our trip to High River in August last year)

Apparently (according to Wikipedia) in Georgia it's called a "sidewalk lawn," though I don't know that I've ever heard it be referred to as that. There are many other names for it, but for now I'll just keep calling it a boulevard.

See how narrow the ones in our neighbourhood are:

Anyway, Miriam suddenly dropped down to the grass in the tightrope of a boulevard. 

"I just found a four-leaf clover!" she exclaimed.

And she had!

It was terribly exciting.

We all had to get a look at it. Here's Rachel admiring it:

And here's Miriam posing with her four-leaf clover and the lovely tree behind her:

"You know," I told the girls, "that once you've found one four-leaf clover it's very likely that you'll find another one nearby. I read once that it's a gene mutation or something, and that it will likely show up more than once in the same patch."

Apparently we're not quite sure why four-leaf clovers occur, but both girls took me at my word and immediately dropped to the ground to paw through the clover.

Mere seconds later, Miriam yelped, "I found one! I found another one!"

What a lucky find! And on the day after St. Patrick's Day, too!

Perhaps, then, there is something to the theory that once you find one four-leaf clover there will be another one nearby. Or perhaps Miriam was already garnering luck from the four-leaf clover she'd already found...

Either way, it's pretty cool to find two four-leaf clovers in one afternoon!

I've been looking for four-leaf clovers my whole life and I've never found one. Rachel hasn't either. 

"Ah, well," Rachel said. "Now Miriam's luck has run out—doubly so! Because she found two!"

Miriam and I looked at her. 

"Wait...I have that backwards. Four-leaf clovers give luck, not take it, right?"

It was a pretty funny mix-up! We joked about possible reasons Rachel had never found a four-leaf clover—like that she gets nervous when she thinks she sees one, so plucks off the extra leaf to avoid being cursed by the leaves of four. "What four-leaf clover? I didn't see a four-leaf clover!"

No wonder they're so hard to find!