For those of you who have not started your seeds for your spring flowers and veggies, do it now.

I have some ferns showing their new fronds, the French tarragon is busting out, my Meyer lemon tree is all budded up for blooming and the toad shade Trilliums are poking through the leaves on the ground.

Hey, what can I say? Spring will be here in less than a week.

Cousin Nature is showing her green, so why don&8217;t we?

I&8217;ll be headed to my favorite independent garden centers this week to get some new perennials for my garden.

One of the perennials that I always buy this time of year is shamrock.

Sure, my shamrocks come back every year in my garden, but you can never have too many.

Speaking of shamrocks and showing your green:

St. Patrick&8217;s Day has been celebrated in the United States since about 1737 and is now considered the day to show off your green of spring.

Folks wear shamrocks, but do you know why? The shamrock became the symbol of St. Patrick to represent the Holy Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

There were a lot of seemingly falsities about St. Patrick; who, by the way, was the second Bishop in Ireland.

My favorite story is about how St. Patrick was responsible for driving the snakes out of Ireland.

Well, any scholarly herpetologist will tell you that there have never been any signs of snakes indigenous to Ireland.

Some theologians believe that the tale about the snakes came from driving the pagans to Christianity.

St. Patrick died on March 17 in AD 461 and there you have it.

We can now justify drinking green beer on March 17.

The Vernal Equinox officially occurs at 12:26 p.m. Central Standard time on March 20. Then spring will officially be upon us. I can hardly wait.

I bid you happy times, mates.

For more on these and other gardening tips listen to Home Grown Tomatoes every Saturday from 6-8 a.m. on 101.1 FM or log on to www.HGTradio.net.

We&8217;re now live on the Internet every Saturday morning.