Merry St. Patrick’s Day to you and your Family!
St. Patrick’s Day is a special holiday for me. I make a point of wearing something green and going out for a breakfast, or at least a coffee if I am too poor or too busy for the breakfast. I think of my Irish family, mostly my Grandmother and her sisters, this day. I miss them all!
Not everyone likes old people, even if they are your Grandparents or Great Aunts and Great Uncles. I didn’t always think about them much when I was a kid. They were just there and we would see them for the family holiday type of things. Then drive out to Woodstock, Ontario to see them on their birthdays or just randomly when my Mom decided to go for a road trip with all four of us packed into the station wagon (later we had a huge van – each of us with our own seat).
Later in my life, when my Grandparents and my Grandmother’s sisters and my Grandfather’s sisters were already old, I started to want to know who they were. It’s sad isn’t it? Just as life is winding down for the old generation the young generation starts to get curious as they move in to take over, filling those shoes.
All my Grandparents and their siblings are gone now. They weren’t all Irish. But, for whatever reason, it’s only the Irish bunch that I have given their own day to. I should look for a good German/ Austrian holiday for my Grandfather and his sisters (I don’t remember the brothers). For now, I have St. Patrick’s Day set as the holiday to remember my Grandmother, Violet and her sisters. Mostly I think of my Grandmother and her older sister, Alice.
It turns out that a shamrock is a different plant from clover, which I sort of knew already. Shamrocks grow with four leaves naturally.
Clover only has four leaves when it’s a mutant of the usual plant. The leaves of the clover are round shaped, where the shamrock has heart-shaped leaves. So you can tell both plants apart in either way.
So this ASCII Art collection for St. Patrick’s Day is dedicated to them, those Irish sisters.
May your blessings outnumber
The shamrocks that grow,
And may trouble avoid you
Wherever you go.
I’m looking over a four leaf clover
That I overlooked before
One leaf is sunshine, the second is rain,
Third is the roses that grow in the lane.
No need explaining the one remaining
Is somebody I adore.
I’m looking over a four leaf clover
That I overlooked before.
The Dear Little Shamrock of Ireland
There’s a dear little plant that grows in our isle,
‘Twas St. Patrick himself, sure, that sets it;
And the sun of his labor with pleasure did smile,
And with dew from his eye often wet it.
It grows through the bog, through the brake, through the mireland,
And they call it the dear little Shamrock of Ireland.
