Sure an' we all have green thumbs today

March 17, 2013

Top o’this St. Patrick’s Day mornin’ to all you green thumbs, from an impetuous gardener who has a bit of blarney in her soul and in her pen.

I recently vowed not to do any more planting, especially of primroses, no matter how sunny the weather. Instead,planned to be outside, digging up quack grass from a bed I’d weeded too gently last spring. I kept half of that promise.

Last week I was shopping for birthday presents for our little grandsons and walked past an indoor sales display of primroses. I stopped (of course) and admired those cheerful little plants – and then gave my shopping cart an energetic push and kept moving toward the toy department. On the way back to the checkout stand, I happened to pass the primrose display. (Okay, I took a three-aisle detour to see them again.) But I take seriously any promise I make to readers. I did not buy the primroses, even though there were a few rare, double-ruffled ones in an old-fashioned magenta shade that I remember from my grandmother’s garden. (Not, of course, that it was difficult to walk away from them.)

I broke the other half of the promise – digging quack grass – because of a beastly cold and fever. An afternoon of heavy weeding would have left me unfit to teach Sunday School to a class of fabulous teenagers o, afterward, to direct a rehearsal for a musical I wrote for them. Weeds can wait; children and teenagers come first.

The combination of gloomy cold symptoms and a week of grey skies left me feeling that I needed to find a bit of springtime soon. I didn’t have to search far. In a flower bed at the edge of our patio, the tips of tulip bulbs peeked up. In a brick planter on the planter, green shoots of two clematis vines promised another summer of exotic beauty. I also found signs of spring-flowering bulbs rising from their winter mulch blankets in our front-yard gardens, and hollyhocks, jaunty with their Irish-green leaves, ready for their more fragile spring cousins to join them later in the season.

Although we’re still getting some snowfalls here in northern Idaho, spring seems to be fighting back harder against the lingering winter. The snow melts quickly now, instead of piling up in drifts or calling for an early-morning shoveling. Finches perch daily on our feeders, and robins have breakfast on our lawn. Our Lenten roses (hellebores) are nearly ready to flower on the front-porch planter. And I’m nearly ready to start organizing the 84,000 seed packets I seem to have bought during the winter. This, I know, is the first step toward spring for me. I will wait, as patiently as an impetuous gardener is capable of waiting.

Last week I received a lovely email from a reader, who asked for gardening advice. (Only professional restraint keeps me from adding a bouquet of exclamation points to the end of that sentence. Very few people ask me for gardening advice, especially if they read my newspaper column or my blog regularly.)

Part of the reader’s email seems especially apt for St Patrick’s Day. He noted that his family has a shamrock plant that has been blooming nonstop since September 2008, and he wondered if this was an odd occurrence. I did some research and replied that indoor shamrock plants do tend to bloom well, compared to outdoor shamrocks, which can be more erratic in their flowering. My own view is that my reader not only has a green thumb, but a thumb as green as the emerald hills of Ireland.

Because we all have a bit of Irish joy and warmth in us today, this Italian Irishwoman wishes you an Irish blessing:

May you always have walls for the winds,
a roof for the rain, tea beside the fire,
laughter to cheer you, those you love near you,
and all your heart might desire.

And may your thumb stay green throughout the gardening season.