Shamrocks in LA?
Sure, it's the Luck of the Irish, so it is... A rogue shamrock appeared in the courtyard of our suburban Los Angeles home, settling itself between gangly blue chalk sticks and an overgrown bush lily. How clever of Mother Nature to arrange for a plant which thrives in the drizzly damp of Ireland, to take root in turf that’s often plagued by drought. Yet, there she was, a purple shamrock no less, kindred to a lilac or jacaranda, fragile as a springtime violet, embedded into our soil and mulch. It was an accidental journey, unlike that of my 18-year-old grandfather, who deliberately migrated from Ireland in 1905. He planted roots in a New York tenement, amid concrete and bridges and streetcars, a world removed from the gentle green hills of his homeland, and a family tree grew in Brooklyn… in Manhattan, and beyond. My father was the youngest, a first-generation Irish American, ambivalent about his ancestry, but my mother’s gusto made up for it. A generation removed from h...