Right about now somebody in the Irish government is giving a final watering to the shamrock that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is planning to present to President Bush at the White House on Thursday to mark St Patrick's day.
A recent Irish government press release referred to just hopes for a shamrock summit between both men but plans were firming up as the week opened.
Somewhat ironically, this was due to Bush picking St Patrick's day – or St Patiraq's day as one wag put it – as his line in the sand on Saddam Hussein.
While the peace process will be top of the formal agenda for the Ahern/Bush meeting, the Iraqi situation will hang especially heavily in the air.
Given Ahern's gyrations over the whole war against Iraq business, and his repeated championing of the primacy of the United Nations, the softgreen leaves of the thing could quickly turn into the diplomatic equivalent of a cactus if the Taoiseach drops his diplomatic guard.
Such are the perils of shamrock diplomacy.
Ahern could open the conversation by saying that he's not one of the recently opinion-polled Irish who are more afraid of the 43rd president than the 'Butcher of Baghdad'. Then again no matter what is said, or not said, Ahern would appear to be heading into an especially delicate encounter with the "with us or agin' us" US president.
On the issue of Shannon airport's (albeit now much reduced) use by the US military there are indications that Ahern will find some way of leaving the way open to continued American use of the Co Clare airport even if war is unleashed without United Nations sanction.
The fact that the US has returned to the UN in search of the Security Council's backing for war would appear to be considered sufficient by Ahern and foreign affairs minister Brian Cowen to justify a policy of keeping Shannon open and available to US airlines ferrying troops to the Middle East.
Like Ahern, Cowen has been repeatedly pointing to the leading role of the UN in solving global troubles. This is fine as far as it goes.
Ireland has been a veritable UN boy scout for years, an ardent champion of the world body's highest aspirations and frequent contributor to peace-keeping missions in far-flung places.
But if the US does launch the mother of all unilateral battles, the place once dubbed "a theatre of the absurd" by Daniel Patrick Moynihan – in his role as US ambassador to the UN – could end up being an international version of Humpty Dumpty.
But enough of war and peace. What about the shamrock in the crystal bowl?
Actually getting "fresh" shamrock to the US for the big day became possible when Aer Lingus started flying Boeing 707s across the Atlantic in 1958.
The relatively easy air passage also got the politicians moving.
Ireland's president, Sean T O'Kelly, raised St Patrick's day to a new political level when he flew to Washington in 1959 with a few sprigs for President Eisenhower.
By 1963, with President Kennedy gearing up for his historic visit to Ireland, the presentation of shamrock had become a diplomatic fixture.
Thomas J Kiernan, the Irish ambassador in Washington, did the honours that year.
He also parted with a joking reminder to Kennedy that the British burned the White House in 1814.
A report from the time states: "The ambassador presented the shamrock, an annual gift to the president, in a vase of Waterford Crystal bearing engravings of the White House and of its Irish architect, James Hoban.
"Mr Kennedy laughed when Mr Kiernan said that Hoban designed 'the White House burned by the Anglo Saxons'.
The ambassador told Mr Kennedy that the shamrocks had been flown in from 'somewhere on the border of Co Wexford,' – the home of the president's own ancestors."
The Troubles in the north added an edge to the shamrock sessions between presidents and their Irish visitors, not always the Taoiseach, but sometimes the ambassador or foreign minister, and not always in the White House.
In 1983, foreign minister Peter Barry came to Washington with the plant but Ronald Reagan took possession of the bowl and its green contents in a ceremony at the Irish embassy.
Said Barry to Reagan: "In Ireland, we send shamrock to our friends overseas and the wearing of shamrock expresses our hope for peace in the year ahead."
Reagan replied: "Like the seeds of the shamrock, Ireland has scattered its sons and daughters to the four winds, and everywhere they've taken root they've made a unique contribution to their adopted country."
This mushy encounter, of course, was pre-Anglo Irish agreement. The shamrock meetings during the 1990s began to adopt a pattern in which the Taoiseach would invariably do the presenting.
Invariably, given the Clinton push for peace in the north during those years, hard politics began to overshadow sentiment.
But shamrock diplomacy could not guarantee success and there were years when the dear plant got a good kick in its middle leaf.
Clinton's last St Patrick's Day at the White House in 2000 took place against a backdrop of stalemate in the peace process.
That was the year when testy Northern Ireland Secretary of State Peter Mandelson signalled impatience with diplomatic shamrockery.
"We just can't keep coming back here for St Patrick's Day slapping each other on the back," he told guests at a British embassy lunch.
Mandelson was to take his own advice seriously as it turned out.
President Bush took the shamrock the following year.
But the White House had to be prodded into the ceremony.
No prodding was needed last year but Bush was distracted a bit by a virtual Israeli invasion of the West Bank.
The Irish visitors were also distracted by remarks from David Trimble critical of the shamrock-bearing Irish Republic. This year promises the mother of all distractions.
But the travelling shamrock is now a hardy annual. Somehow or another it should reach its destination.
When it does, it could well provide President Bush with his most peaceful moment in a long while.
