Sweet Peas!

SWEET PEA , Lathyrus odoratus, is a flowering plant in the genus Lathyrus in the family Fabaceae (legumes), native to Sicily, southern Italy and the Aegean Islands.

Sweet peas are one of my favorite flowers to grow due to their delicate look, fragrance and vigorous blooms if properly cared for. Even more wonderful about Sweet Peas, they don’t mind the cold! So they are the perfect seed to start early in a container while the ground is still cold. They come in a variety of incredible colors and fragrances…here are a few of my favorites pictured below…

You can start your sweet peas early, especially if you give them a bit of shelter. Soak them for a couple hours before your start them. You’ll need seedling mix and a small container to put the mix in. Old yogurt cups, jello cups, egg crates, and berry clamshells work great. Make sure to poke holes in the bottom of your containers for drainage. Simply fill the container with seedling mix, make a small hole in the soil with your index finger, then drop one sweet pea seed in. Label by what variety it is…and you’re done!

I like to start my sweet peas at the beginning of March and I grow A LOT of them. I like to make a big splash with many different colors for bouquets all season long. Once the sweet peas are about 2 inches tall you can harden them off by moving them to a larger container in an area more open to the climate. The idea is to expose them, gently, to the climate so they are ready to thrive where you choose to plant them. Once they are (about) 3 inches tall, you can plant them out.

Where to plant them? They like well composted soil with lots of sun. And they certainly need a trellis to help train them upwards! You can make a trellis from bamboo and twine, tree branches and twine, chicken wire, old fencing or you can buy a fancy one. Once you have planted your sweet peas and they are established…they need to be pinched off. This means literally pinching off the top 1/4 of the plants. It seems violent but it will help your plant produce more blooms. As you start seeing blooms watch for little curly “arms” sprouting out from the vines and attaching themselves to things. Snip these when you see them as they take energy away from the blooms.

When you cut sweet peas for a bouquet give yourself as much stem as you can. If you add a little bit of sprite (soda) to the water you’ll get a longer vase life out of them. The more you cut sweet peas, the more they will grow! So cut away!

Home.

On Halloween night of 2022 we stood in front of our new house waving our keys around in front of the camera. Then my son promptly threw up in the driveway. I hoped it was NOT an omen for the future.

It took us 11 years of thinking and saving before we finally bought our house. There have been some surprises since then but on the whole all I feel is grateful. We live on an acre and are very lucky to be surrounded by horse farms here in SW Washington. I dare you to find a more fertile region for growing things, I’ve always been a gardener and was even an urban chicken person for several years. I have grown things in tiny spaces, odd rooms, strange nooks, wide open pastures and window sills (none of which I owned). To say the least a whole acre feels like a 1,000 acres! I’ve always imagined raising chickens, selling eggs, cutting greens from my yard at Christmas, and growing sweet smelling clematis all over my front porch. There is plenty to keep me busy right now and lots of goals. Everyday is a new adventure in my yard and I feel nothing but gratitude.

Nowhere is it written that I “deserved” to own a home. While that notion is deeply engrained into the American dream, I always knew that most people in this world don’t know how they are going to feed their family, much less own a whole house. Very few in this life know such stability. Yet even with this knowledge, I would find myself pouting and complaining. Why was the housing market so expensive? Why did Chip and Joanna Gaines have to make it look so easy? Why does Zillow keep sending me cute cottages in Maine??!!

When I look back on those moments I’m filled with embarrassment and dare I say, shame. While “shame” is no longer fashionable, I’m one of the old timey people who still see its value in healthy amounts. The problem with complaining about what you don’t have…is that when you finally get the thing you always wanted…you regret having not wished and hoped with more grace.

Recently we experienced a particularly magical winter night (Ash Wednesday). I stood in front of our house watching my children make a campfire in the snow. The stars were bright and the shadow outline of the tall pines encircled us. Our corgi meandered through the dormant blueberry patch sniffing for moles. “There is no way I could possibly deserve this.Thank you” was all I could think.

For some wildly strange reason, I have been gifted this beautiful place to call home. I don’t know for what purpose or for how long…but I hope it is a place where all kinds of people gather and feel loved. I hope that no matter who they are or where they come from, they will get to stand around a campfire in the snow with me and think “wow, that was a fun day.”

Foraged Winter Flowers

It’s approaching the end of Winter and yet Spring has not quite arrived. Gardeners everywhere are growing impatient and eagerly await buds to start opening up! Spring’s first bits of color in the form of crocus, snowdrops and other delicate bulbs are still not ready to show their faces.

And yet, there are ways to pass the time and add blooms to your dinner table even now! If you are lucky enough to have planted hellebore in your yard, they should be well in bloom. They are referred to as the Christmas Rose among many due to their ability to bloom during winter months. Never underestimate the charm of a few twigs, moss and even weeds in addition. Weeds won’t last long in a vase but if you can find some with a bit of color or delicate petals, make good use of them by adding them to your arrangement right before you guests arrive.

The vessel I’ve used is an old candle votive in a beautiful musky lavender. I added floral foam, soaked in water of course. The floral foam allows you to stick your twigs and floral in any direction you’d like! I like to add the statement pieces first and imagine how it would look in the natural world…creating a wild look. Then I take the smaller items and use them to fill in gaps. Arranging your piece slightly off center (cascading to one side or the other) adds visual interest.