A Little Progress Report

 

Hello there!

I've been ignoring this blog as I've been working on assorted things: pre-preparing our taxes (that is, getting my records updated and gathering the info to send to the guy who actually does the proper tax prep work);  thinking about garden plans and seed starting (more on that later); and working on getting my own website up and running, which will eventually replace both this blog and my Etsy shop. 

I'm finding the website-creating to be rather slow going (the tax stuff too), so I thought I'd drop back in over here with an update.

The domain SharonsCompendium.com, which currently redirects here, will lead you there when it's ready. It will include a blog and a store, plus the usual "about" and "contact" pages and that sort of thing. When it's live, I'll write one more post here alerting any visitors to my new web home, and then will let this sit as an archive of my previous postings — going all the way back to 2006! 

Replacing the Etsy shop will take a bit longer. I've come to realize that many things that seemed to make sense for Etsy are really just desperate attempts to get noticed in what has become a very crowded and noisy market place. I don't actually expect to get more buyers once my website is fully stocked, but I do look forward to providing a calm and pleasant experience for both myself and my visitors. 

What that means, as far as progress on the website goes, is that simply importing my product listings from Etsy isn't going to do it, although it does save some time to start there (which I've done). I am rewriting titles and in many cases needing to take new photos or edit existing ones to better fit the requirements of the Squarespace platform. It's all good, though, and I do feel that the product pages will be much nicer and more attractive than on Etsy. 

So when the website goes live, it will have a small number of products, and I will keep the Etsy shop open until the new place is fully stocked.

Meanwhile, I still need to plan this year's garden — and get some seeds started. I did plant some clover at the end of January, which is now sitting pretty in a couple of teacups on the buffet for St. Patrick's Day (today, as it happens), and I'll keep that going through Easter as a kind of pseudo Adonis garden, after which it'll go into the compost. 

Planting seeds — I guess that's a fitting metaphor for my work on my website, too. And so I'm going to get back to it. 

A Shamrock by Any Other Name ...

Last year's clover, in a sweet little vase from Catherine Reece pottery.

Perhaps because St. Patrick's Day occurs so close to the vernal equinox, I get a little preoccupied with shamrocks and clovers and other green growing things. 

It's the month when many Minnesota gardeners are getting ready to start seeds indoors, and although I feel the same urge, I haven't done much seed starting for quite a few years. I did plant some cilantro seeds in a peat pot a couple of days ago (they're sitting in a south window, waiting to germinate), and that may be the extent of it for me this year.

Some years I have started seeds of white clover, Trifolium repens, at the beginning of February in order to have a pot of them in time for St. Patrick's Day. I've even written about it here and here.

These are not the "shamrocks" you see in the grocery stores about now. That plant is a type of oxalis, aka sorrel, that does not grow wild in Ireland or any other part of the northern hemisphere. But it makes a much nicer houseplant than do the clovers, so I guess the greenhouse growers figured, why not?

Oxalis at Seward Co-op today, in a display with Irish oat bread. Note they're not calling them shamrocks.

The plant identified as a shamrock by a plurality of the Irish (46%  in a 1988 survey) is lesser trefoil, aka hop clover, aka several other common names, aka Trifolium dubium, which is a bit smaller than white clover and has yellow blossoms. Although not as well known as white clover, it is, apparently, about as widespread. Native to Europe and Central Asia, it's been introduced and naturalized in North America, Africa, and New Zealand. 

Phinney the Galway cat (at least, that's where his name comes from) with my watercolor illustration of T. dubium, one of the Irish shamrocks. (Phinney's much more interested in the pencil than the art.)

Now that I've been studying this plant a little, I'm pretty sure I've seen it in many of the grassy strips between the sidewalk and street (which we call the boulevard here in Minneapolis, an apparent idiosyncrasy of my city). It's considered invasive in many areas, but not always because it is a problem for native species; more often, it is said to "invade" lawns. But since lawns aren't exactly natural ecosystems, that's not really saying much. 

Some photos of T. dubium show the plant with much rounder slightly bluish leaves, but that could be a case of mistaken identity, since there are a few look-alike species, as this site explains. 

The reason I've tended to favor white clover (T. repens) as the shamrock, even though it was the runner-up to lesser trefoil in the fore-mentioned survey (at 35%), is because the seeds are easy to come by; and that's because it used to be considered a desirable addition to lawn grass seed mixtures; and that's because it's a legume, as is  T. dubium, and so "fixes" atmospheric nitrogen, which means that it makes it available for other plants to take it up, which makes the grass healthier and greener.

Now it's most often considered a weed by those who prefer a manicured grass-only lawn, an aesthetic that emerged after WWII and the introduction of broadleaf weed-killers, according to historian Virginia Scott Jenkins in her book, The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession (published by Smithsonian Books in 1994). 

In other words, it became a weed once there was an herbicide that could kill it. In fact, the target plants were plantain and dandelions, with clover being an innocent bystander, but in order to sell the chemicals to the public, the makers had to convince them that clovers were weeds too.  

Except now it's finding its way back into the good graces of those who prefer a low-maintenance, diverse lawn that's much prettier than a boring grass carpet. Clover is also very much appreciated by butterflies and bees (including several non-stinging wild bees), mammals* (yes, that includes rabbits, you bunny haters), and birds (who eat the seeds).

My recently completed watercolor of T. repens

Clovers are also edible to humans, offering both protein and carbohydrates. In fact, according to the comprehensive history by Charles Nelson in his book, Shamrock (Boethius Press, 1991), the earliest observations about shamrocks in Ireland, reported by literate visitors, were that the Irish ate them.

And that, not anything St. Patrick did with them (if he did), is the most likely reason shamrocks have become the emblem of Ireland.


* Fun fact—Other wild animals that consume white clover:

Leaves and flowers are eaten by grizzly bears, moose, mules, deer, blue grouse and the white-footed vole.

Seeds are eaten by these birds: northern bobwhite, bufflehead, American coot, several different grouse, the horned lark, mallard, gray partridge, greater prairie chicken, willow ptarmigan, American pintail, California quail, and American robin.

Many butterflies use them as caterpillar nurseries, including the eastern-tailed blue and several sulfurs and skippers. Still more butterflies visit clover blossoms for the nectar.

 (From Encyclopedia of Life)

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Not Much Green on this Gray St. Patrick's Day

A little tip: If you want to grow your own clover for St. Patrick's Day, you should probably start the seeds on the 1st of February, and not the 11th, as I did this year. My notes from previous years did suggest that six weeks' lead time would be about right, but I just wasn't thinking about it at the beginning of February. Perhaps I'll try putting a reminder into my computer's calendar for next year.

Even so, any little bit of green is a welcome site on this gray day with sleet pelleting our windows and plenty of dirty snow still on the ground. And I am quite pleased that the little cyclamen and orchid plants I bought a few weeks ago are still sitting pretty in Grandma's old china. Those wee baby clover are nestled into a handmade porcelain cup by Minneapolis artist Dyann Myers, which I bought a few years ago in the spring at the St. Paul Art Crawl.

I have three little pots of clover; perhaps I'll transplant them to an Easter basket after today. They should be positively robust by the 20th of April.