Yellow. Whins, of course, just now, especially in the deep south of Kerry. Lovely bushes, some of them balls of yellow. There are all sorts of proverbs and old sayings:
"Kissing will go out of fashion when the bloom is off the whins" (furze, gorse if you prefer). It never is, of course. There is always the spot of yellow all 365 days of the year. And yellow is the spring colour nearly as much as green, along with the yellow dusting of pollen on catkins hand, in cultivated places, forsythia, winter jasmine, crocus, and the daffodils.
Driving in a general southern direction you note how markedly the old pattern of white houses and green fields has been going.
Small cottages and big farm houses alike are into different shades. Even more so, the new style housing. There was a time when an ice-cream pink seemed all the rage. But now yellow is everywhere. Pleasant yellow, passable yellow and yellow of a dire and startling hue. In some towns the public house has taken on a virulent, aggressive yellow. It certainly jumps out at the passer-by, and presumably that's the point. What do the Tidy Towns Committees think of it? Anyway, it's a free country.
All this is leading up to something you will, hopefully, not hear today. But you will. Somewhere, some commentator on the parades and demonstrations in honour of Saint Patrick will mention the national flag "the Green White and Yellow" or "the Green White and Gold".
Poor Thomas Francis Meagher a century and a half ago gave us the tricolour of Green White and Orange which stands for peace between orange and green. And that's what the national flag says daily. Orange, not yellow. And don't forget
Thomas Davis. He wrote "Orange and Green will carry the day".