Every cloud, it is said, has a silver lining. Finding it in this era of Covid is hardly easy. But every now and then there are glimmers of it. I have found them on roadside walks and supermarket visits, in moments when drivers have stopped their cars to let me cross the road.

Often in summer my walks are spent picking up trash around the Island. But in these Covid days I have found the roadsides and fields and woods virtually free of cigarette wrappers and beer cans. And so instead of looking at trash I am seeing wildflowers that I had almost forgotten — flashes of orange butterfly weed in the fields and gleaming goldenrod. As its name suggests, butterfly weed brings color to fields by luring butterflies, but also by being a cheery orange itself.

Goldenrod, too, is gleaming on roadsides and I have read in Laura Martin’s Wildflower Lore that if I carry a sprig of it with me wherever I go, I will be assured of good fortune. Good fortune is something all of us need these days. And I can prove that the good fortune of carrying a goldenrod sprig at all times is more than folklore.

Some years ago, after picking up trash I also picked a bouquet of goldenrod at the end of the Middle Road. Later I found out the trash wasn’t trash at all. Upon inspecting it I found two crisp $100 bills inside. When neither West Tisbury nor Chilmark police could find a claimant, they said the money was mine. I am sure it was the goldenrod I was holding that had brought the good fortune. I was leaving the next day on a trip to Switzerland and the $200 was welcome spending money.

I have also been seeing black-eyed Susans (an elegant mix of bright yellow and dark, velvety brown) and Queen Anne’s lace in fields and on roadsides. Queen Anne’s lace, I have learned, is so named because its snowy white delicate flowers resemble the headdresses of long-ago queens. The purple spot in the flower’s center is a drop of blood from a diligent queen having pricked her finger making lace.

Although the blue yarrow I like in mini-bouquets only stays blue until noon, Wildflower Folklore informs me that sleeping with a sprig of it under my pillow will bring dreams of love. Should I dream of cabbages instead, with yarrow under my pillow, all is lost! I will have a spate of bad luck.

Without Covid’s having kept roadsides cleaner than usual, I might well have failed to have wildflower bouquets on my dining room table each day this summer and acquiring all this information. Other summers, I would have been too busy picking up garbage.

There is humor, too, even in these Covid days. The other day, in up-Island Cronig’s, I mumbled through my mask to a masked worker, asking her where I could find cat food. The employee eagerly led me to the vinegar shelves. I shook my head and mumbled “cat food” again. She nodded with understanding and took me to the baking needs shelves. Then, in desperation, I meowed through my Covid mask of white and black kittens gamboling among flowers. That did it. I was led directly to the cat food shelves.