Shhhh!….It’s just Clov...abis!

I am currently making preps to cultivate a plant that, if my neighbors or the local authorities ever find out about it, could land me in some hot water.  But don’t worry….I’m taking precautions.

Right now, I’m just preparing the soil and laying out where my “patch” will go.  Later on, when I begin actually planting seed, I’ll continue to do so as discretely and outside the view of my neighbors as possible – possibly at night...using ultra-red light to see by.

So, if you promise not to tell anyone, I’ll let you know what I actually intend to grow.

It’s…..clover!

You see, last spring, we started to put in a vegetable garden – nothing significant, just a few tomato, pepper, and squash plants.  Additionally, we have a few strawberries, and hope that our two fig trees will continue to grow and start to produce larger, and more plentiful, fruit.

We tried to do everything we could to make sure the soil we were planting in was of good quality, and we have made sure to water as much as is necessary.  For the most part, the plants themselves grew rather well.  But we were disappointed that few produced much in the way of a harvest.  When we considered what might be different from our efforts today, and our efforts to garden many years ago (my wife grew up in a rural area and her family had a rather large and productive garden every year), one thing seemed to be conspicuously absent – bees!

We live in a small subdivision and many of our middle-class neighbors either employ a lawn service to cultivate and mow their manicured lawns, or they work many hours each week themselves at this endeavor.  I, on the other had, will make sure that my front lawn is mowed on a regular basis, in order to fend off the worst of my neighbors’ ire.  But as far as weeding, I do my best with a manual weed puller, but I’m willing to tolerate a few weeds here and there in order to avoid using a chemical weed killer.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not one of these radical environmentalists that owns an electric car to take me to and from my private jet, or flies in a crew to sail my zero-emission sailboat whenever I need to travel oversees.  If your personal battle against the intruders of the perfect lawn involves chemical warfare, best of luck to you.  For me, it’s more about the question of why we need our lawns to be free of every kind of plant that is not the perfectly-shaped and arduously-attended blades of grass.  Mind you, I’m still not a fan of dandelions, and will resort to nuclear war, if necessary, to rid my lawn of “sandspurs”, that sneaky, grassy plant that produces those little burrs that attach to your shoes, socks, and pant legs.  It just seems to me to be less than the best use of time and resources to have that “golf-course” like lawn – unless, of course, you own a golf course.  This is entirely my opinion.

But, given the efforts in my area to eradicate anything that is likely to offend the average home-owner, that might not be especially ugly, but unfortunately is still in the “broad-leaf weed” category, I’m wondering if this hasn’t had the unintended consequence of also greatly reducing the population of potential pollinators.

So, how do I fix this problem, using resources that I can employ only in my little quarter-acre kingdom?

I discovered that certain “farm supply” stores sell clover seed.  I plan to cultivate this offensive plant, starting with a section of my back yard.  If the previous owners didn’t infuse the lawn with too much chemicals to make this all a wasted effort, I hope to have a decent crop of clover flower...and honey bees...by this time next year.

But, if my neighbors, or HOA authorities inquire as to what I’m doing….I’ll just say that I’m growing marijuana.