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.