Red Clover

Almost every spring portions of our front yard are covered with red clover.  The clover blooms about the same time as the milkweed plants start growing, and until recent years large numbers of monarch butterflies on one of their migration routes up from Mexico, would descend on the yard to feast on the clover nectar and lay eggs on the milkweed.

This year, the red clover bloomed, the milkweed grew -- but I haven't seen a single monarch.  Every year over the past ten or so years they have been fewer and fewer.  The honey bees are fewer and fewer also.  Last year I had to hand pollinate most of my vegetable garden plants to get a fruit set.  When I see the lawn spray trucks all over the neighborhood I just want to scream!

Now the clover has all set seed, and I'm harvesting the seed for next year.

I cut whole seed heads and plunk them in a paper sack, that I will fold over and staple and label.  Some time between November and February, on a nice day where rain is expected later that day or the next, I strew them out all over the yard, walking over where they fall so they make some contact with the soil. And maybe next spring there will be monarchs.