Strange St. Patrick’s Day Tradition
March 17th, 2009
Filed in Savory and Sage Tidbits
Tags: flower, flowers
So, this will make my fourth blog post in as many days. However, I feel inspired to share with you a particularly strange family tradition for St. Patrick’s day. This is a short one, but a good one.
Every year, the night before St. Patrick’s Day, my Mom would take us to the grocery to select ghastly dyed green carnations to give to our teachers the next day. My Mom is super-creative, has quite the green thumb, and is very stylish. Therefore, I have no idea where this green carnation tradition came from.
To this day, I am not at all interested in carnations, tiny garden pinks, or anything else that resembles one. So, of course, my husband is so totally in love with dianthus, that every time he sees one at the grocery/hardware/garden center/gas station he brings one home. I do NOT call that the Luck O’ the Irish. His family is from Slovenia, though.
Fun Experiment for Kids
If you want to explore the wonders of plants with your children, making your own crazily dyed carnations is a nice little science experiment. You can show the kids capillary action in action by buying a few carnations at the store, snipping off the bottom two inches, and putting them in vases with water and a bit of food coloring. You can make some truly unnatural creations in this way.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day Everyone! I plan to partake in the other horticultural St. Patrick’s Day tradition: Drinking Beer. (Beer comes from a plant, yes?)
March 17th, 2009 at 8:42 am
I THINK I remember as a kid doing an experiment where I split the stem a bit, put half in one color and the other in a different color and saw both colors end up in the flower. Or maybe I made that up? Better run an experiment.
March 17th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Yep, beer comes from plants, and you’ll be pleased to know that it doesn’t come from carnations. Wheat, rye, hops, yeast… All things you can find in the botanical world. Of course wild yeast might be a bit sketch…
I also don’t like carnations. I remember an ex asking me what flowers I liked, and I told him anything but carnations – he got me carnations because he didn’t know what a carnation was. Bless.
March 17th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Being 1/8 Irish (fine, I’m a Heinz 57 mongrel), I send a toast to everybody while drinking a stout Guinness! Actually, the 7/8 rest of me revolts against this. Fine, a nice dark ale it is (full of hops, barely and other goodness.)