It snowed here this morning. I watched it out my kitchen window, pictured here an hour or two after the snow stopped. We’ve had so many unseasonably warm days this winter that the magnolias are beginning to burst into blossom, a good two weeks before they have any right to do so. Today, St. Patrick’s Day, it snowed.

I have been cultivating greenery indoors, greenery destined to become sabzeh, and the 7th “s,” or seen, of our haft-seen. Two kinds—wheat and lentils—to be sure something grew and was sufficiently luxuriant by the19th, when we will celebrate Nowruz.