Happy St. Patrick's Day

We celebrated St. Paddy's Day yesterday and had a great time wearing GREEN, eating corned beef and  CABBAGE at Pop-Pops and enjoying our cake and coffee with Baileys Irish creamer to top it off. The kids couldn't wait to go over to Pop-Pop's house and as soon as they got there it was all time for playing. We played soccer, baseball and looked for more signs of spring. 

 Look over there, more signs that Spring is on its way....can't wait for Sunday and don't forget to line up to get your free Rita's water ice. My favorite day of the year!

 ALL ABOUT ST. PATRICK'S DAY

John Roach

for National Geographic News

Updated March 16, 2011

On St. Patrick's Day—Thursday, March 17—millions of people will don green and celebrate the Irish with parades, good cheer, and perhaps a pint of beer.

But few St. Patrick's Day revelers have a clue about St. Patrick, the historical figure, according to the author of St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography.
"The modern celebration of St. Patrick's Day really has almost nothing to do with the real man," said classics professor Philip Freeman of Luther College in Iowa. (Take an Ireland quiz.)


Who Was the Man Behind St. Patrick's Day?
For starters, the real St. Patrick wasn't even Irish. He was born in Britain around A.D. 390 to an aristocratic Christian family with a townhouse, a country villa, and plenty of slaves.
What's more, Patrick professed no interest in Christianity as a young boy, Freeman noted.
At 16, Patrick's world turned: He was kidnapped and sent overseas to tend sheep as a slave in the chilly, mountainous countryside of Ireland for seven years. (See Ireland pictures.)
"It was just horrible for him," Freeman said. "But he got a religious conversion while he was there and became a very deeply believing Christian."
St. Patrick's Disembodied Voices
According to folklore, a voice came to Patrick in his dreams, telling him to escape. He found passage on a pirate ship back to Britain, where he was reunited with his family.
The voice then told him to go back to Ireland.
"He gets ordained as a priest from a bishop, and goes back and spends the rest of his life trying to convert the Irish to Christianity," Freeman said.
Patrick's work in Ireland was tough—he was constantly beaten by thugs, harassed by the Irish royalty, and admonished by his British superiors. After he died on March 17, 461, Patrick was largely forgotten.
But slowly, mythology grew around Patrick, and centuries later he was honored as the patron saint of Ireland, Freeman noted.
(Related: "St. Patrick's Day Fast Facts: Beyond the Blarney.")
St. Patrick's Day Shamrock Shortage
According to St. Patrick's Day lore, Patrick used the three leaves of a shamrock to explain the Christian holy trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Today, St. Patrick's Day revelers wear a shamrock out of tradition. But people in Ireland hoping to wear an authentic shamrock are running low on luck.
Trifolium dubium, the wild-growing, three-leaf clover that some botanists consider the official shamrock, is an annual plant that germinates in the spring. Recently, Ireland has had two harsh winters, affecting the plant's growth.
"The growing season this year is at least as delayed as it was last year, and therefore there is the potential for shortage of home-grown material," John Parnell, a botanist at Trinity College Dublin, said in an email.
"We have had frost and snow showers in parts of Ireland within the past week," he added.
Other experts pin the shortage of the traditional plant as much on modern farming methods and loss of traditional hay meadows.
"The cold winters we are having here lately are just another nail in the coffin," Carsten Krieger, a landscape and nature photographer whose books include The Wildflowers of Ireland, said via email.
To make up for the shortfall, many sellers are resorting to other three-leaf clovers, such as the perennials Trifolium repens and Medicago lupulina. According to the Irish Times, these plants are "bogus shamrocks."
Trinity College's Parnell agreed that Trifolium dubium is the most commonly used shamrock today, which lends credence to the claims of authenticity.
However, he added, the custom of wearing a shamrock dates back to the 17th and 18th centuries, and "I know of no evidence to say what people then used. I think the argument on authenticity is purely academic—basically I'd guess they used anything cloverlike then."
What's more, botanists say there's nothing uniquely Irish about shamrocks. Most clover species can be found throughout Europe.