On St. Patrick’s Day eve

If I spend too much time staring at the treetops tossing in the tumults of wind, I could develop a case of motion sickness. A windy, gusty March day, that’s close to classic, makes me glad I have enough sense to keep the dragon kite in the house until more temperate breezes prevail. It also makes me look forward to flying that kite someday soon and wonder if it’s time to reread LeGuin’s EarthSea cycle.

Are you familiar with Gogi Grant's recording of Restless Wind? Does March have more than one meaning? It is usually a restless month and ....?

wearing of the green: shamrocks

Photo by J. Harrington

We’ve experienced enough unsettled weather, politics, public health and environmental change over the past several years to make those of US with any degree of sensitivity unsettled ourselves, to varying degrees. Meanwhile, I’ve not yet gone looking to see if the current drought has affected the emergence of skunk cabbage. Red osier dogwoods in nearby wetlands are deepening their colors on the usual seasonal schedule. Coarse grass blades along the road ditch are greening and growing. Yesterday we saw a soaring eagle that might have been migrating North or might be a local just stretching its wings. We’ve no way to know at this time of year.

The University of Minnesota has a Season Watch resource about Minnesota's phenology. It’s worth at least a look, maybe more. I don’t think it has a section on dragons, though.

Tomorrow we’ll begin our St. Patrick’s Day celebration by baking a loaf of Irish soda bread and listening to the latest album by Altan. For yet another year I’ll wax nostalgic about my younger days and marching in the parade in Boston, where the weather is likely to bring showers tomorrow, a not unfamiliar condition during that parade.

St. Patrick’s Day

By Eliza Cook

St. Patrick’s Day! St. Patrick’s Day!

Oh! thou tormenting Irish lay—

I’ve got thee buzzing in my brain,

And cannot turn thee out again.

Oh, mercy! music may be bliss

But not in such a shape as this,

When all I do, and all I say,

Begins and ends in Patricks’s Day.

Had it but been in opera shape,

Italian squall, or German scrape,

Fresh from the bow of Paganini,

Or caught from Weber of Rossini,

One would not care so much—but, oh!

The sad plebeian shame to know

An old blind fiddler bore away

My senses with St. Patrick’s Day.

I take up Burke in hopes to chase

The plaguing phantom from its place;

But all in vain—attention wavers

From classic lore to triplet quavers;

An “Essay” on the great “Sublime”

Sounds strangely set in six-eight time.

Down goes the book, read how I may,

The words will flow to Patrick’s Day.

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