About peas

Written on 5/24/2021

Last year, before we had unearthed this sweet fern farm, there was a garden box, late plantings and too many vegetables all crammed together. I planted peas sometime in June. They came up beautifully, little tendrils reaching for something to hold onto.

Then I read or heard something that told me I had planted them too late and I wouldn't get peas.

Since they were taking up so much real estate I decided to cut them back, leave the roots in, cut my losses. I could have been eating the pea shoots but I didn't know how to harvest those then. I was bummed because the sweetness and crunch of a pea picked just off the vine is like nothing else.

Conventional wisdom said it was too late, so the peas were gone.

The most magical thing about gardening is that the plants don't know there are rules and they don't read the planting charts or worry about their zones. They just grow. Despite being cut back. Despite bugs. Despite 'wrong' timing. And sometimes they don't. Despite perfect timing. Despite sun and water. Despite doing it all the 'right' way.

When we were picking our millions of cucumbers last year, I noticed a few pea shoots that had continued to grow and tangle themselves around the cucumber vines. Soon there were snow peas and snap peas, just a few, enough to get that taste memory stored up for another year.

Had I not cut them back, had I not listened to some 'rule' perhaps we would have had a crop of peas. We will never know.

What I learned from this was that my garden is mine. I can study and learn and get a general idea of how things grow, but then I need to grow them. I need to be a free spirit and a scientist and plant things early or late. I need to absorb the magic of what a seed will do if given soil and water and sun, because the awe of it, the awe when those little leaves emerge is worth getting it wrong, over and over.

This first year of a big garden is my experimenting year. I'm trying mixtures of techniques and using my intuition and sacred aesthetic. This garden is an extension of our home, it is land that I can curate as I choose where to put each plant or seed. In my mind I already see the design fully expressed.

Now, we wait and weed.

The garden has its stories to tell. Devotion is sprouting, I'm listening and transcribing.

I cut back the peas. They grew anyway.

There is some wisdom in there for all of us.