I was bored. It was as simple as that. So
what if I sort of encouraged Agent Catfish to send me a few of her newly sprouted Shamrocks that she’d mentioned she
was going to try to grow the last time Seaview sat off of Daytona Beach. So what if it was October now, not the month one
normally thinks of St. Patrick’s Day or any other Irish theme holiday, but that was okay, I’m Irish. Little did
I know that instead of a nice ordinary three ( or if I was lucky, four leaf clover),
she’d send me an Oxalis triangularis, a ‘False Shamrock’. She didn’t know that, it turned out. She only knew she’d
purchased some rhizomes from some cheap online store. At a discount. (They probably wanted to get rid of the blasted things.)
It’s not that I mind being kidded by my boys that I must have triggered
a little romantic spark in our mutual friend. She had already begun to send me
brownies, cookies, and other goodies from her Florida kitchen (presumably for myself and the ‘boys’) ;
now she was sending me the ‘Love Plants’! That’s the common name for them. That’s bad enough, but the damn things are purple! Deep, dark purple! Not green, not pink (Heaven forbid) but Purple!
In fact, one look at them, and Angie asked to
use them to decorate for Halloween! Even the blooms are purple! Yeech!
Now, I’m not saying that purple is ugly in a rainbow, or in coral reef,
or even decorating a fish or two, but a Shamrock? It’s…It’s
almost a sacrilege!
Lee couldn’t stop himself from laughing until I threatened to remove the
brownies he’d helped himself to off my desk. Not being from Irish stock, at least not that we know of, he can’t
begin to understand that a real Shamrock is a Trifolium Repens, with green leaves! And white flowers!
This
travesty of a purple Shamrock, well, he just can’t understand.
Chip’s
not much better, even if he does have a little Irish in his ancestry, but has
managed to keep himself from laughing with a tight lipped twitch. The only person who seems to understand my dilemma is Sharkey.
I mean, I can’t just tell Catfish I want to toss the things out. And if she deems to visit (she does that sometimes,
unannounced) and doesn’t see
them on my desk or bookcase, well, I sure don’t want to hurt her feelings. So I’m stuck with them. Of course,
if there’s an accident with the Halloween punch bowl…
