In celebration of a decade of Barataria, Mondays are being given over to re-runs from the earliest daze of this blog.  It may surprise you that I was ever this brief, but here is a piece that leads into St Patrick’s Day very well – even if it isn’t quite Spring in Minnesota.

Luck is sometimes where you find it. Or how you look for it.

With the damp arrival of spring over, our park has the first clover of the year peeking out of the ground. They are small and round and tender, not much to work with yet. But it’s good to get a head start on clover season.

See them? It’s all a matter of patience and concentration.

A four-leaf clover is, as everyone knows, supposed to be lucky. Exactly why this is the case seems to elude most people, who value having the clover more than the ancient art of finding it.

The reason a four-leaf clover is supposed to be lucky is that it takes some time to find one. They occur at about one in a thousand clovers. If you go to a clover patch, with all your earthly troubles, and sit down for a while, you will probably find one. And in the process, you may just forget what heavy heart you brought there. That’s the only real luck, after all.

Four-leaf clover hunting is actually an ancient Celtic form of meditation. The interlacing leaves may dazzle the eyes as you run your fingers through them, but the other senses are gently lulled. The delicious green aroma of clover and the warm hand of sunshine on your back can make you drowsy, but a whistle of wind and the frenetic buzz of the occasional bee might keep you focused on the task. It is an odd meditation, so active and yet so peaceful at the same time, that it takes on a quality like Tai Chi.

I have not yet found my first one of the year, but I’m not worried. It will come in time. The searching is the better part of it, even if the park is a bit wet right now.