Eostre on April 1st.

Eostre is an ancient goddess of spring, and because of some weird dating mechanism based on a lunar calendar, this year the religious holiday superimposed upon this honorable pagan celebration occurs on April 1st, which is often called April Fools Day, a widely disliked display of foolishness.  The religious holiday has no significance for this writer, and it wasn't something that was part of mix of messages, and it was more like Mother Nature was playing an April 1st joke on all of us.  TPP always looks forward to spring, and usually by this time 30 to 40 plants in our gardens have commenced blooming (or even come and gone).  This year, 2018, only 17 plants have started flowering, and three of these events were recorded yesterday on 31 March.  And today will be a sort of joke about spring because it is cold and tonight the temperature may be cold enough to be damaging  to even quite hardy plants.  This morning in the local newspaper an article about houseplants quoted a  horticulturalist as saying "the mental health benefits of plants are obvious."  TPP would concur, growing plants is highly therapeutic, and TPP can think of no person he deeply dislikes who also grows plants, and some of the worst would have to be coached "green side up" if they were laying sod.  So today's weather, and its impact on TPP's plants is rather depressing.  So come on Eostre, some fancy bourbon has been sacrificed (spilt) in your honor, and yet we get more cold, and even snow is possible.  OK TPP admits that the upper Midwest's weather may be beyond the abilities of an ancient goddess (but it was well-aged bourbon).  At any rate let's get this last gasp of winter over with.   TPP will attempt to cheer himself and others around him by cooking something semitropical and warming.  Maybe even indulging in a rum-based cocktail.