 Be, be, be, be, become strong. You'll be, be, be, be happy. The earthworms, it will save the earthworms. We'll save the ischemera. Hurray! Dutch white clover, Dutch white clover. Hurray! Dutch white clover, it's the ischemera. So today everybody, we're going to go outside after I get done reading my book and we're going to go out in that cold, cold weather out there. And we're going to sprinkle clover seed all over on the lawn. Whoa! And we have some helpers that know how to do it. They've been doing their own lawn. And when we sing this song, it's really easy to sing. So when we go out there, what's one thing that it will protect? Anybody have any ideas? What was it? Earthworms. It will protect the earthworms. It will protect the earthworms. So I'll sing that three times and everybody can sing along with me. Alright? It's very easy because it just goes over and over. It will protect the earthworms. It will protect the earthworms. It will protect the earthworms. It's the ischemera. Hurray! Dutch white clover, Hurray! Dutch white clover, Hurray! Dutch white clover, it's the ischemera. Thank you for coming today. I am Grandma Cho and I'm going to do a little book reading for everybody. I have my book right here. Just set this down for now. My book is titled White Clover for Honeybees. And when I started this, we were all very worried about the honeybees. But since then, we've gotten worried about a lot of other things. The butterflies. Did anybody know about the monarchs and all the problems we're having? Well, just like with the honeybees, those are the only ones they can count. They can't even count all the other butterflies that we're losing. And with the honeybees, they farm them. So the farmers, like my friend Farmer over here, J. The Gardener and Peakeepers, know that our bees are in trouble and they lose a lot of their beehives. And if those bees had more healthy places to go and had safe places, they would be able to gather more nectar, just like when I was a child. So my book is the story about all the things that we did on the lawn when I was a little girl. And I'm Grandma Jo. So I've got my name right here in the book. Underneath it is my design artist, Stewie Freund. Who in this room knows Stewie from New Holstein? Ah, I think he might even be someone's godfather, right? All right. Beginning with chapter one, White Clover in the Lawn. This is me with my blind baby doll. Back when I was a kid, they put rubber bands in the back of the eye sockets. And then your little baby doll, when you laid it down, it went to sleep. And when you picked it up, it opened up its eyes. Ah, but the rubber bands didn't last. So I had to take really good care of my blind baby doll. My name is Joanne and I was named after my grandpa, Jo. So sometimes I am called Jo. There I am as a little baby. Wasn't I just so cute? When I was a little girl, I called my big sister Susie. She called me Joanne. Susie loved to play house. And being the little sister, I loved to do whatever my big sister loved to do. Our baby brother Davey always wanted to play too. Davey could play in the wagon. But watch out, he might fall. Davey could play in the sandbox. But watch out, he might get sand in his eyes. Davey could water the flowers. But watch out, he might pour water in his shoes. Davey could hold a kitten. But watch out, he might be too. Got him by the neck. But Davey could not play house. Davey would mess up everything. We would wait until Davey was taking his nap. When Davey was sleeping, mom would go and get the blankets. We would get our dolls and doll suitcases. Mom would spread the blankets on the lawn. One blanket was my house. The other blanket was Susie's house. Each house had pretend rooms. The bedroom had doll blankets and pillows. The toy dishes were in the kitchens. We were the mommies of our homes. If we stepped off the blanket, we were outside the house. If we were on the blanket, we were inside the house. When we had our houses set up, we would visit each other and pretend to ring the doorbell. Put the coffee on. We would pretend to drink our coffee from our toy china cup. We called it a coffee clutch, just like mom did when her friends came to visit. When mom had her coffee clutch, one friend always brought sweet treats. They would come from the local bakery in a big white box. In our make-believe, we used old cigar box that Grandpa Joe gave us. For our sweet treats, we would pick the white clover blossoms. They do taste a little sweet and a little like peas because they're in the pea family and you can actually eat them. As we picked, we watched the honeybees that gathered nectar and pollen from all the white clover blossoms. The honeybees had plenty of food to eat because the lawn seed included a Dutch white clover seed. For the honeybees, the white clover was a favorite sweet treat. White clover honey, and behind me you can see the honeybee landing on my white clover, on my lawn. Back then, Dad worked for the Sure Make Sausage Company. He bought the truck in 1955. It was red and yellow. The truck had a sausage man, Mr. Sherweeney, painted on the side. Before Dad came home from work, Mom would have us pick up all of our dolls and put everything away, and she called this song Here Comes the Pick-Up Parade. Here Comes the Pick-Up Parade. Here Comes the Pick-Up Parade. It had a marching beat to it when the sausage truck pulled in the driveway. We knew the fun would begin. Dad loved to play games. We would play tag, hunter, red rover, red light green light, frying pan, and our favorite, kick the can. There were days Dad would come home and he would need a little rusty, rusty. His favorite place to lie down was in the middle of the living room floor. After being away from Dad all day, we could not leave him alone. Soon he would give up on catching forder wings and turn into a big Daddy monster. Dad would grab us. He would hold us. We could not get away. Then he would tickle us. He was a really good tickler. And we would cry, oh, please, Daddy, stop, Dad. Made up a game called Walking Boy. He would use his first two fingers and marching his fingers towards us, he would say, here comes Walking Boy. We would start to diggle before his fingers would even touch us. And we knew Walking Boy was a really good tickler. Of course, someone always ended up getting the hiccups. The old time cure for hiccups is a teaspoon of honey. Grandma Emma taught us that. I don't know why it works, but it does. We always use white clover honey with all the white clover and all the lawns. Honey bees made a lot of honey. Chapter three, White Clover Shamrocks. I remember our first television. The picture was in black and white. Our favorite shows were the Mickey Mouse Club. Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me? M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-E Mickey Mouse. Forever let us hold our banner. Hi, hi, hi, hi. Come along, sing a song and join the jamboree. M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-E and the Howdy Doody. It's Howdy Doody time. It's Howdy Doody. Come on in. Come on, it's all right. It's Howdy Doody time. I saw Howdy Doody on the show and I really wanted one. Welcome. Come on in. How are you? Hi, what's your name? My name is Grandma Cho. I get a hug today. Oh, thank you for that hug. And look at all the children that are here too. They should come up and sit right here on the carpet. You can all come up here. All right, I was so excited Christmas morning when I opened my present and I saw the Howdy Doody doll. I hugged him and I said, Howdy UK. In the beginning of television there were very few shows for kids. There were mornings before the television started. We would turn on the TV and there would be a test pattern. No shows were on yet. Just the test pattern. The only sound, right, we would sit and watch the test pattern until we saw, we saw silhouettes walking across the screen. Oh, man, we had great imaginations. Soon we would go outside to play because it was boring. We always had more fun making up our own games. One game was called Find a Four-leaf Clover. You win! What did you win? You won luck, of course. Grandma Emma taught us that a white clover sometimes grows an extra leaf. For this game we had to find four-leaf clovers among the trillions of three-leaf clovers out in the lawn. Once I spent the whole day looking for a four-leaf clover, also called a shamrock, I wanted to be lucky. I looked and looked, but it was not easy. Finally I found one. I ran in the house to show everyone Brother Davey was excited. He said, let me see it, let me see it. I let Davey hold it. Oh, that was my big mistake. He ripped a leaf off my four-leaf clover. I was angry. Oh, very, very angry. Mom said, how can you be so angry? It is just a clover. Mom liked the three-leaf clovers. She thought it was the true Irish shamrock. Mom taught Sunday school at St. John's Church. She would use the leaves to teach her class, the Trinity, just like St. Patrick did. Welcome, children. Susie was born on St. Patrick's Day. She was born lucky, as they say in Ireland. Her special birthday gave Susie the love for shamrocks. She would press them and make them into bookmarks. They were her lucky charms. Chapter four, white clover for wildlife. Ooh, I know. There used to be a television show called Captain Kangaroo. The captain had a bunny puppet named Mr. Bunny Rabbit. We had a bunny too. Our bunny was brown and white with the white cotton tail, just like Mr. Bunny Rabbit. Honey Bunny liked to eat white clover. It was her favorite food. We would take Honey Bunny out of her rabbit hutch and let her munch the white clover while we played on the lawn. Honey Bunny never left the yard. One day, we forgot to latch the hook on the door of the rabbit hutch. Oh, oh. What happens? Davey saw Honey Bunny hopping around loose in the yard. I ran outside to catch her, but Honey Bunny hopped right under the picket fence in the back of the yard. The clover must have looked juicier on the other side of the fence. I ran to the gate and while I was unlocking it, Honey Bunny hopped away. Honey Bunny was gone. I looked and I looked, but I could not find Honey Bunny anywhere. The next day, all the neighbor kids were on the lookout. One of them had a report. Hey, some kids down the block, they have a rabbit, but they say it's a wild rabbit. I ran to the house with the rabbit. When I got there, a box tipped upside down, and the kids told me they had a wild rabbit under the box. I asked to see it, but the kids said, no, go away. This is our rabbit. We caught it. We own it. Suddenly, Honey Bunny poked her nose out from under the box enough to lift it up and squeeze out. And she hopped right to me on the other side of the fence and up into my arms. And I said, see, this is my rabbit. I hugged Honey Bunny and smiled all the way home. As it turned out, Honey Bunny got married the night that she ran away. And it wasn't long before she had baby bunnies. The bunnies were all different colors, black, brown, white, brown and white, black and white. Davey named the black and white bunny Popeye. Rabbits do like to eat white clover, and so do many other animals. Birds, butterflies, lots of insects, especially the honey bees love the white clover. Sometimes white clover is the only plant in bloom. When that happens, white clover keeps the honey bees from starving. White clover crowns. I have made lots of white clover crowns in my life. And Daisy and Lily, do you have your crowns that I made for you? So when you put together a white clover crown, like my grandma taught me, you use flowers from the lawn. And as you can see in this picture, there are a lot of fun to do. Grandma, Emma taught us about the plants. People said she had a green thumb. Grandma knew how to use all the plants. The tame plants were the plants she grew in her garden. Come on up here and show them. The wild plants were planted by nature. Grandma would say that the wild plants were free gifts. She used some of the wild plants for cooking and others for tea. Grandma knew the wild plants growing in the lawn had value. She even used one plant for a Band-Aid. Does anybody know about that plant? We go out in the lawn and pick that plant, don't we? Yeah. Yeah. What is that plant called that stops the bleeding? You remember? Yeah. It was called plantain. It was Grandma, Emma, who taught us how to make clover crowns. Oops. Hold on. I took her in one too many. We would sit in the lawn and pick white clover blossoms. She told us to pick them with long stems. As fast as we could pick them, Grandma would French braid them into a clover crown. Soon she had made one for each of us. And Grandma would place them on our heads saying, I crown you beautiful princess. I crown you beautiful princess. Of course, Davey was crowned King David and she would braid a few leaves into his crown. He looked like a king instead of a princess. Thank you girls. At the end of the day, Grandma would hang our crowns in the attic and dry them to make tea. She would make white clover tea and mix a little honey in it. She'd like to drink it nice and warm. Chapter 6 White clover for the grass. Emma and Joe were dad's parents. Helen and Harris were mom's. Grandpa Harris was a train engineer who worked for the Northwestern Railroad. Sometimes the train he was driving would pass close to our house. We would walk to the train tracks so that we could wave. Mom knew the time that his train would pass by. Usually she would plan it so we could wave at grandpa and then go shopping at Fairview Store. The corner grocery store. The county fairgrounds were kiddie corner from the store. That's how it got its name. I love going to Fairview. The store shelves had penny candy behind the checkout counter. Liquor sticks and big pretzels were in jars next to the baseball cards behind the glass. We'd love to have a few coins to buy candy. We would bring it home in a tiny brown paper bag. One day Grandma Helen came over with mom's sisters, Audrey and Ruth. They were going to have a coffee clutch. Grandma wanted to talk without little ears around. So my ears were little and Grandma Helen gave me a nickel and I was sent out with permission to go to Fairview Store. As I walked across the front lawn I pulled the nickel out of my pocket to look at it and it flipped out of my hand and fell into the lawn. I got down on my hands and knees and I began hunting for the nickel. I hunted and I hunted but I couldn't find it. Back then lawns were very thick and healthy. Clover takes nitrogen right out of the air and shares it with the fertilizer in the grass. I looked and looked but I could not find that nickel. I gave up just as the coffee clutch was ending. Grandma did get her wish. My little ears were kept busy. Chapter 7 White Clover for Honey Bee Many things had changed since I was a little girl. Few people remember black and white television. Long on our Mickey Mouse Club and howdy duty and Captain King Guru. Honey Bunny and her family went to live with Uncle Frank and Aunt Josephine. My howdy was donated to an Indian school with one of the toy collections at St. John's. Lawns no longer include white Clover seed. With many people remember that the most expensive lawn seed contained the highest count of white Clover seed. I'm called Grandma Joe now and I miss the white Clover more than ever. I wish all the children could enjoy lawns where they could find shamrocks and make white Clover crowns. White Clover crowns. So thank you so much. We have an exciting project to do today. I know it's going to be perfect. So what we're going to do is first we're going to sing a little song and then we all get to go outside and even though we have snow on the ground we're going to sprinkle the seeds all over looking at me like you can't believe it. Is that because it's so cold? Oh yeah I know that's why we're going to have to really get our energy up and get our bodies warmed up first before we go and do this right? Yeah. I had a smoothie first. Oh you did? Well that'll help you keep warm won't it? I'm going to sing this little song I need my helpers again so when we get to the chorus on this song it's going to be are you kidding me? And we're all going to clap all right? Got the sign? Ready? One day I went over for a walk in Gerald Burke's pasture with a group of swirks the Madison agronomist who gave a lecture said to restore your top soil many times I have thought are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? What happened to the clover lawns? That made my mind think back to the lawns of my childhood all of me trying to find a clover so we could say hey I got the luck of the Irish many times I have thought are you kidding me? What happened to the clover lawns? Most people don't remember clover in little lawn seed and the plant used by St. Patrick those of the times I have thought are you kidding me? What happened to the clover lawns? What happened after we plant this clover? What will happen when we plant the clover? What will happen when we plant the clover? What will happen when we plant the clover? It's the Irish Shamrock. Could you grab one of those jars or something? What does that one say? Feed the robins it will feed the robins it will feed the Irish Shamrock Hurray Dutch like clover hurray Dutch like clover hurray Dutch like clover it's the Irish Shamrock Grab another one. What does that one say? Say children it is say poor children it's the Irish Shamrock like clover hurray Dutch like clover hurray Dutch like clover it's the Irish Shamrock another one. Take poor toes it is say poor toes it's the Irish Shamrock Hurray Dutch like clover it's the Irish Shamrock Good job good job helpers you can set those down so it's going to take a little while for the cameraman to move out and we can all take a little break but we're going to all come downstairs together and then we'll go outside at 10.30 and sprinkle all the clover in the lawn and in between times I want to let everyone know after we do the clover in the lawn I have a gift for each one of you each one of you gets a copy of my book they're over there and a bookmark to take home with you but you can leave them up here until you're ready to go so you don't have to carry them around alright ok so then we'll just take a little break anybody who has any questions can come to me yeah what's the question I'm four years old oh you're four years old yeah oh and what's your name May May that's so nice to meet you May thank you for coming to my book reading that was so nice of you May and I love the hug that you gave me right at the beginning that was so nice yeah I'm so excited for to play the stuff aren't you excited I am too and even the library and Alice and she's so excited who else is excited I am I'm excited I'm excited alright be be be be be be be be friendly be be be strong your be