Sweet Peas in 2010

Walmart has its seed racks out. Fool that I am, I bought four packets of Sugar Snap Pea seeds and later wished that I'd bought even more.

I intend to have some sweet peas this year.

To fully understand the determination behind this simple statement, you would need to know some history beyond my first blog entry. I'll spare you the agonizing details, but, to sum them up, I've tried for years to grow sweet peas, with less than satisfactory results.

Part of the problem is that, during the winter, I lie around thinking up more ideas for the spring than I can possibly implement when spring actually arrives. And I get lazy, and my joints get creakier, and it's easy to put things off. Another part of the problem has been that nobody in the family but me really-really-really LOVES sweet peas. Thus, like the Red Hen with her bread, I can't muster much cooperation from the troops until it's time to eat. Every spring, I start bugging Pop-Pop to start bugging Mr. Pete or Mr. Charles to come break up the garden. Neither of them grows sweet peas, and they're not eager to hitch up the plow until it's time to plant summer vegetables; sweet peas should have been in the ground a long time before that (the seed pack says I can start in JANUARY!). I've tried growing fall peas, but I can never get the timing right on the planting, and most of the peas don't mature before freezing weather sets in.

But I'm ready this year. Last fall, the tomato patch - the one at the end of Pop-Pop's driveway, close to my house where I can conveniently tend it - got a serious tilling in preparation for a turnip-seed sowing that never happened because of all the rain. And after that tilling, thanks to an approaching thunderstorm, we brought the machine home instead of returning it to Pop-Pop's shed, so it's out there in my yard, covered with a tarp, handy, just waiting to be cranked. (Whether it will actually crank or not is another matter, but I shall remain optimistic about that.) I've got seeds. I've got hog-wire fencing and metal fence posts. I've got a current almanac. This year, there ain't no excuse.