Such promise packed into those little wizened globes - delicate pastel petals, such fragrance and spiralling tendrils that clasp and twine, holding the vine on its skyward journey. But mostly it's about memories - memories that on catching the scent in a summer breeze come flooding back.Today in my empty greenhouse I am a time traveler - it is March, my imagination sees June and my memory sees a gauche 10 year old helping her father pinch out the side shoots of his sweet peas in a Warwickshire garden too many years ago.
Good thoughts.
11 comments:
Yes, good thoughts for sure.....spring and flowers, gardens, little girls and fathers in memory.
You'll have to post some photos of those sweet peas in the summertime.
Showed Husband your post and asked him whether he soaked his sweet pea seeds before sewing. He had never heard of this method! The sweet peas we have in the greenhouse are now six inches tall Husband boasts!
Beautifully evocative prose. An ode to the sweetest of peas.
Good luck with the sweet peas - one of my favourites and for exactly the same reason as you - such happy days, chatting away to Dad in the garden, as we nurtured those little blooms!
I love the story of you and your dad.
Wish I had a greenhouse because I try and do these things indoors and my plants end up leggy and fall over as I always seed too soon.
Good luck with those sweet peas!
Aargh, still haven't sown mine. I am behindhand again.
I love sweetpeas so much. They are always in the running for favourite flower, along with all the other impossible to rank favourites. My association is with my nana. She grew them and loved and them and would plunge her face in a vase for the scent with exaggerated swoons of delight. A bit dramatic, my nana!
Can almost smell them in advance! Spent the afternoon messing around in my greenhouse with Mum today - bliss.x
Late for planting? Oh no! Maybe being in the frozen North gives me more time. I am hopeless with sweet peas, but try every year. How do people get those long straight stems, I wonder? Mine end up a tangled mass - if they've managed to evade the slugs and snails.
Aargh! Sweet peas! I knew I'd forgotten something. Beautiful blog - almost a poem and indeed a timely reminder! Incidentally I lost my first planting last year to damp and slugs and planted a second lot in May. I still had sweet peas in flower in September which was rather lovely.
Sweet peas. Do so love them. At home ours used to come up year after year in a great tangle against a sunny wall. Wish I could recreate that abundnance.
Fabulous - the anticipation of all those gorgeous scented blooms is half the fun, as well as the routine of the sowing.
I can't imagine you were ever gauche!
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