We planted red clover for the bees. Underneath each fruit tree, tiny clover are pushing their green heads through the mud. I sit by an apple tree and marvel that anything I planted is actually growing. I imagine my bees buzzing all over. And honey flowing.

My five muddy horses line up along the fence line, opportunistic equines who live on a three-acre dry lot filled with pinon and juniper. Ten hooves do a number on the thin New Mexico topsoil, and any other vegetation that was there once is now long gone. My percheron horse Toby has his head turned sideways, neck stretched as long as a draft horse's will go, and is doing funny things with his licorice lips in my direction. He's hoping I'll pull some of the timothy grass that's sprouted way up above the baby clover (as a result of all that horse manure fertilizer my tree-planting husband used) and give him a sweet snack. The appaloosa mare stares me down. The full force of her white-rimmed gaze will have me handing over the goodies in no time. She thinks.

Hay seed is the reason the National Forest folks want you to bring up cubed alfalfa for your horses instead of bales. Timothy hay is growing all over the place in the Pecos mountains, carried up mainly in horse's bellies, and then plopped down upon the earth one horse apple at a time in the middle of all that wildness.

I imagine the deer and the elk like it.

Looks like my clover does.