Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus, or, Happy St. David’s Day! We celebrated appropriately enough with Welsh cakes and a big, thankful sigh that there was no rugby this weekend.
In honor of the day, I bought some daffodils and noticed that they came with a very clear warning that they were not edible. Apparently there have been occasions when people have used them in place of onions, so labeling is now general practice, as they are actually fairly toxic. Funnily enough, the Welsh word for “leeks” is “cennin”, whilst daffodils are “cennin Pedr” or in other words, “Peter’s leeks”, so I guess the resemblance has been noted for some time. It struck me that cennin Pedr could actually be a bit of dark humor, referring to St. Peter, due to their toxicity, but Pedr’s identity seems to be lost in the mists of time, and as far as I know, he was just a Welshman with a field.
Yesterday, we were grazed by the northern edge of a large snowstorm. We had some strong winds and several inches of snow, but the airport in Providence, Rhode Island had more than three feet of snow, so we were let off lightly. Nevertheless, most of us decided to keep off the roads and work from home. At one point I looked out of the window and watched the goldfinches gradually gathering by landing under the feeder and then abruptly fleeing back to the nearby branches. They continued for long enough for me to get a quick video out of the bedroom window.
