Saints Patrick and Francis

March Madness underway. Cabbages the size of basketballs, tournament-worthy, obviously not from the Northeast region. Accompaniment to corned beef for the feast of San Patricio. Tuesday’s blizzard gifted about 12-inches of sloppy wet snow, followed by an overnight freeze and temps in the twenties. Any plans for spring gardening were nipped in the bud. Our sixteenth winter in New England. Weather wise, not the worst. 2015 holds that distinction, Boston relentlessly hammered with storms that yielded a seasonal snow total close to 110 inches. As previously described, planting peas on St. Patrick’s Day is a personal ritual I acquired or created a few years after landing in these parts from Southern California. It’s a rite rife with longing for longer days, hankering for hot summer nights, yearning to replace snow shovel with garden spade. Alas, 17th March in 2017 was not a day in the garden. Our vegetable plot and statue of Saint Francis remain under a frozen blanket. His sandaled feet still shrouded by inches of snow, Francisco has been through this ritual before. Pea planting will be delayed until further notice.

 

Pre-season exhibition

My daughter and I share a favorite ritual of looking for and finding four-leafed clovers.  It started when she was a girl, going through some difficult seasons on her school sports team.  A little good luck, discovered in our backyard at home or in the grass of the playing field, always brought joy and a welcome distraction from the team’s less than stellar win-loss record.  There’s a special place alongside our vegetable garden where clover grows underneath the raspberry bushes. On hands and knees, crawling amongst the canes, I came across a quatro clover last autumn and rather than pluck it, decided to let it keep growing. The good luck plant survived not only Hurricane Sandy and the winter of 2012, but the great blizzard of February 2013 that buried everything under a couple feet of snow. This week my daughter asked for a status update on the lucky clover, and I am pleased to report the trifolium repens is indeed a snow survivalist species. This is the pre-season for some of us. Spring beckons. Happy St. Patrick’s Day weekend. Go Pirates!