Wednesday, March 10, 2010

St.Patrick's Day: The Ultimate Green Holiday



alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5447217374239636722" />

St. Patrick’s Day is a gardener’s dream holiday; they do not call Ireland the emerald Isle for no reason. The country is greener then the usual green we see in the United States. Its rich earth provides an abundance of root crops such as potatoes, turnips, parsnips and carrots. The above ground crop of cabbage is king. Carrageen, edible seaweed is made into a jelly. Irish stew is made with mutton, onions, potatoes, parsley and thyme.

Now the shamrock! St Patty originally was born in Roman Briton. He came to Ireland and brought Christianity with him, creating schools and churches. He used the three leaf clover to demonstrate the holy trinity. Have you ever found a four leaf clover? As children my friends and I would spend hours looking for them. One time I did! It was so exciting. I kept it in-between two pieces of paper. After several years, it disintegrated! Wish I knew about contact paper then.

Now for the nature craft, it’s fun and easy. All you need is some clear contact paper, scissors, ribbon or wool, a whole puncher, and clover. Normally it is good to press a leaf or flower in a book or leaf press first for a week. This takes the moisture out. Due to time constraints, this year it’s not possible. . Laminate the clover in the contact paper. You can use this to create a necklace, luggage tag or book mark.


Sing some Irish songs, dance and have fun!

8 comments:

  1. What a delightful post! I love learning the history of things and any time we can have some plain 'ol fun, well that's pretty great!
    ps. like the hat, suits you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Loved reading your bio and such wonderful things you are doing.

    I would have to say I'm partial to the 3 leaf clover ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ahhh the fantasy. If only it was so here in Ireland. The reality, is that even the spuds and carrots are imported from Spain, the potato fields have been abandoned or covered with housing nobody will buy (property bubble), the primary crop is grass as farmers sit back on subsidies to leave the land idle, and the "Paddys" spend the day drinking and puking in the streets. Erin go bragh!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Luv the necklace and the hat. Some of my friends call me "Hatlady", because I wear hats most of the time. Wish I could find some clovers somewhere in my yard. Here in OH, we've had so mch snow this year, the grass looks pretty sad. Guess I'll jst hv to dig out my "fake" clovers frm previous year's St. Patrick's Day dances. Enjoyed ur Bio. U truly r spreading alot of good throughout the world.

    ReplyDelete