Happy Feast of Saint Martin!
Today, November 11, marks the Feast of St. Martin. This sort of date is hardly ever on my radar, but came racing to my attention as I read from Elizabeth Lawrence's Gardens in Winter this morning. "Winter begins with the Feast of St. Martin, the eleventh of November. About that time in Charlotte we have our first killing frost, which is often followed by golden days, called St. Martin's summer because flowers then bloom out of season as they did when St. Martin died and the boat that bore his body wafted up the Loire without sails or oars, while trees on either side burst into bloom." Winter... beginning today ?! Ha! In the days leading up to yesterday, it was more like summer. I was sweating as I worked outside, in my garden and Lindie Wilson's garden. (For the record, I do NOT enjoy sweating in November.) What I found interesting, reading on in Gardens in Winter , was the next paragraph: "In America the halcyon days came to be known as Indian summe