Peas with a mind of their own

 "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it."

I love edible-pod peas, but have had mixed success in growing them. They don't like the heat, and usually die out about the time everything else starts waking up. And they don't come in bush varieties, which I would prefer because it makes harvesting easier.

This year, I planted them in one of the shadier spots in our backyard, just outside the dripline of a mature lemon tree on the east side of our lot. For the first time, we tried giving them a flexible net trellis to climb. We laid drip tubing along the base of the trellis, planted a couple of pea seeds under each hole, and added a border of lettuce in front of the peas  (The nasturtiums you see in the picture came up all on their own)

You would think the peas would have been quite happy with this setup, which I thought would be ideal for them. However, it has been a constant battle to keep them on the trellis and off the ground. Instead of wrapping their tendrils around the netting and reaching for the sky as I'd planned, they seem to prefer latching onto nasturtiums and/or each other and sprawling all over the ground. Even if I managed to convince some of them to attach to the trellis, they'd wind up being blown off whenever the wind came up. Replacing them on the trellis worked fairly well when the vines were small, although I found it rather troublesome. However, as they grew, no matter how gently I tried to disentangle them and re-place them on the trellis, I'd wind up breaking or bruising the delicate vines.

This morning I noticed something interesting when I went out to pick peas. I found many more peas than I anticipated, for the ones hiding in the tangled masses of vines weren't easily visible. I think I found more peas on these vines with a mind of their own than on the vines that behaved themselves and grew up the trellis as (I thought) they ought to do. And as sometimes happens when I am working in the garden, my mind turned to philosophical thoughts.

The common understanding of the proverb above is that if parents will put enough effort into parenting correctly, their children will grow up to be exactly what they expect them to be. From observation and experience, I don't think that understanding is correct. And looking at it from a pea vine's point of view, I don't think that it's necessarily even a desirable outcome. After all, the pea vine's purpose in life is not to provide tasty peas for my enjoyment, but to grow in the way it was designed to grow (by God or natural selection, take your pick) and to reproduce.

The proverb is true in that children need boundaries in order to grow into responsible adult human beings. I wouldn't expect good results if I just tossed a handful of peas into my backyard and hoped for the best. I went to a good deal of trouble to provide them with a good growing location, a reliable source of water, and I tried to keep weeds at bay. But on the other hand, once children grow into adults they may take a different path than the one their parents envisioned. Try to force peas or people into a design of your own making, and you may bruise or break them. Offer support, but allow them to find their own path, and the positive results may surprise you- if you have the eyes to look for them.

Buds and blooms and beginnings

February 24, 2016

Color is slowly returning to our garden, although the beans and squash I planted last week have yet to show themselves. The resurrected fig tree surprised me today with a new leaf, and our oldest artichoke has reached its full size.  Mike dug out the deceased Asian pear, and we replaced it with a nectarine that was full of blooms when we purchased it. May it live long and prosper.  Nasturtiums are beginning to bloom, and we've seen (and eaten) a few asparagus spears. The pea harvest is still going strong, but that won't last long as the heat begins to set in. I caught a whiff of citrus blossom, although from where I don't know. It won't be long now.

Pear blossoms

Nectarine blossoms

Bye-bye broccoli

February 19, 2016

This week I harvested the last of the broccoli, which was beginning to flower, and removed the plants. Rather than pulling them up, I used the permaculture technique of cutting them off at ground level and leaving the roots to compost in place. That way I didn't uproot the larkspur seedlings that were hiding among the broccoli plants.

Peas, please!

Asparagus

Our days of eating fresh roasted broccoli for dinner are over for this year, but I picked the first of the snap peas and saw the first stalk of asparagus emerge from the ground.

Peach blossoms

Apricot blossoms

Almond blossoms

Almost all the fruit trees are beginning to bud and blossom now, with the exception of the Royal Minnie cherry and an unknown species of pear tree which is always the last to show signs of life. The cherry is probably dead above the graft line, but we're leaving it in the ground for now as there are still green sprouts from the rootstock.

My Lenten garden

February 12, 2016

  It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom. But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely. -Galatians 5 19-22, The Message

Lent usually arrives about the time our garden begins to wake up. The roses we cut back in January are beginning to leaf out, the fruit trees are beginning to bud and blossom, hollyhock and larkspur seedlings are emerging, and the temperatures are generally in that sweet spot between the chill of the winter and the blast furnace of the summer. We usually aim to plant tomato transplants and other warm-weather crops by Valentine's Day, so that they will have a decent start before it gets too hot for them to prosper. Today I put out transplants of Roma, Early Girl, Mr. Stripey, and Pink Brandywine tomatoes, Armenian cucumber, zucchini and acorn squashes, along with a couple of pony packs of petunias. In the next week, I'll plant seeds of Roma II bush beans,Red Burgandy okra, yellow squash, and basil. By Easter time, the current barren brownness of the raised beds should be alive with tasty and beautiful growing things.

On the one hand, it seems incongruous that Lent, that traditional time of introspection, repentance, and self-denial, should occur just when the circle of life is reinventing itself in our back yard. On the other hand, it makes total sense. The garden has to be prepared in order for desirable plants to grow. That includes a lot of digging in order to remove Bermuda grass, Mexican primrose, clover, and assorted weeds which will take over the garden if ignored, and crowd out the vegetables and flowers I want to have. It includes adding fertilizer, compost, and other soil amendments to nurture the growing plants, and making sure the drip irrigation system works so they will get enough water. If I don't do these things, the garden won't be what I want it to be.

And so I think it is with life. Lent isn't about giving up something for a prescribed number of days. It's a time for taking stock:  thinking about what kind of person I want to be, of acknowledging the many ways I fall short of being all I could or should be, and of making the changes needed to start anew in the right direction. Sometimes that means digging up weeds, and sometimes that means adding fertilizer.

Blossoms on the peach tree

Peas at last

February: Hard Labor

February 5, 2016

Here's a panoramic taken from our side patio. Mike completed the raised bed/patio paver redo necessary for our pergola plans, and we're waiting on HOA approval on those. Since the weather has begun to warm up a little in the afternoons, we've been working on clearing Bermuda grass and other unwanted invaders from the raised beds, redoing the wells around the fruit trees and rosesbushes, working on rejuvenative pruning of frost-damaged and overgrown bushes and vines, and other labor-intensive tasks. Today Mike is working on the pond and streambed, which has again been overwhelmed by cloverlike plants with thick matted roots. He also found that iris roots had grown up into the pond pump, and is cutting those back along with doing some root pruning. I've been working on the raised beds and tree wells, and found several nice-sized sweet potatoes as a reward for my labors.

We're harvesting lots of broccoli, which is peaking now, along with lettuce, spinach, and citrus. Too bad my mother isn't here to enjoy the grapefruit. We can't even donate the extra to a food bank. Although we haven't had any problems, concerns about the pest which spreads citrus greening disease have caused a quarantine for citrus in the West Valley. There are lots of blossoms on the pea plants, but no peas yet.

Broccoli

Snap pea blossoms

Assorted lettuces

Grapefruit