St. Patrick's Day 2019

Carter in our community garden 2019

It's St. Patrick's Day today. How did it come around again so soon? It's the story of my life: I barely finish the Sunday post and it's already Sunday again. My days are flying by at an alarming rate. In a couple of days, spring officially begins, and another winter will be behind us. In fact, this Wednesday at 2:58pm here in the Pacific Northwest, it will be SPRING. The Tulip Festival in the Skagit Valley is only two weeks away, but this year the tulips will be late, because of all our cold weather in February. I suppose with all this warm weather we're having right now it means that the early tulip varieties will begin blooming within another week or two.

Today I'll start planting the flowers I purchased yesterday into my front porch planters. It's such a good feeling to see the sun shining and everything greening up. Our wonderful community garden is in the best shape it's ever been in, since we have one new resident, Carter, who has helped to create a fine environment. He was out there improving things all winter long, so instead of going out to see the winter weeds having taken over, my own plot was quietly doing nothing under a bed of straw. I need to think about what I want to plant out there, but first I'll brighten up the front porch with lots of pansies and primroses.

I hardly know where to begin with my usual post ruminations. It's curious to me how sometimes I can barely decide which of many directions to take, and others my mind is a complete blank. That's sort of where I am today. I first looked up the history of St. Patrick's Day, wondering who he was.

According to tradition, Patrick returned to Ireland to convert the pagan Irish to Christianity. The Declaration says that he spent many years evangelising in the northern half of Ireland and converted "thousands." Patrick's efforts against the druids were eventually turned into an allegory in which he drove "snakes" out of Ireland, despite the fact that snakes were not known to inhabit the region. ... Celebrations generally involve public parades and festivals, céilís, and the wearing of green attire or shamrocks. 

So he was another one of those guys who was converted and believed it was his calling to convert the whole rest of the world to Christianity. Since here we are in 2019 wearing lots of shamrocks and other greenery and drinking green beer, he was sort of successful in turning a regular day into a festival In Chicago, where an entire river is dyed green. You can read about it here. A video shows that it's really a vivid color and people love it. It's only done when the holiday falls on a weekend, apparently, so it's been six years since it was last turned green.

I've got some Irish ancestry in me, which I discovered last year when I spit into a little tube and sent my DNA off to be tested. I'm about half British and Irish, with no way to know how much for each one, but somewhere in the distant past my ancestors probably danced an Irish jig or two. And wore shamrocks too, perhaps. I'll find something green to wear today.

This past week was a challenge in being able to recover from some rather intense exercise. I had my usual two yoga classes, both of which were hard enough to make me sore, and then on Thursday we hiked up Oyster Dome, a couple of thousand feet of elevation, on ice and lots of snow. It took me a few days to recover from it; my knees don't do well traipsing through soft snow, and I was reminded once again that my cardiovascular system isn't what it once was. I struggled, but slept like a rock that night. Now that it's been three days, with a nice five-mile walk yesterday to work out the kinks, I think I'm mostly recovered.

I keep putting off joining the slower hiking group, because I don't want to leave my old friends behind. I look forward to being with them each Thursday, but this latest hike was just one more reminder that this summer I will not be able to keep up on the harder hikes into the High Country. It's good to push myself, I think, but still I must remember that everyone slows down, and there is a reason for me to pay attention to what I can and cannot do. Even as I write this, I feel a sadness come over me for having to face the inevitable.

This does not mean I will not continue to do all I can to stay fit and healthy, but there really is a change from year to year that I cannot deny. It does sometimes make me wonder if there is an underlying problem that my body is telling me to pay attention to. One of our regular hikers discovered that he has pancreatic cancer, but he was keeping up with us until one day, he just couldn't any more. I worry about something like that happening to me. It's the one cancer I fear the most, because there are no tests to detect it until it has spread. It's scary to contemplate.

But make no mistake about it: something sooner or later will surface to cause me to modify or reduce my vigorous activity. I am reminded of the Five Remembrances of Buddha:

1. I am subject to aging. There is no way to avoid aging.
2. I am subject to ill health. There is no way to avoid illness.
3. I am going to die. There is no way to avoid death.
4. Everyone and everything that I love will change, and I will be separated from them.
5. My only true possessions are my actions, and I cannot escape their consequences.

I have written about these remembrances before. But I conveniently forget as I live my life that they apply to me, too. And that I am no longer young, so it's evident that the vagaries of age are catching up to me. Pondering this, I realize that it's time for me to start focusing on that last remembrance: that my only true possessions are my actions.

But I must not forget that happiness springs eternal and that digging in the dirt and planting flowers are a wonderful source of delight. On St. Patrick's Day this year, I will be sure to spread around a bit of happiness into each soul I encounter. That begins right here, right now, with you, my dear readers. Let me wish each of you a wonderful day and week ahead, and that you will find happiness.

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
― Marcel Proust