Some Things Should Not Be Rushed

Morning coffee, hosta unfurling their eyes, the bloom of tulips, the blossoms of a crabapple, childhood...

Some things should not be rushed.

Lettuce and Peas...And Edamame!

Sugar snap peas, lettuce, 'Buttercrunch, and 'Cimarron' sown about 2 1/2 weeks ago in the large pot on my deck.  They had germinated before the last snow and night when temperatures reached 12 degrees (F).  Still looking good!  

Here in the United States, we must be pea snobs.  We tend to eat peas shelled and steamed (or boiled).  Regardless, when we eat peas we are usually talking about eating the immature seeds, not the fresh shots or tender pods.   We do this not only with peas, but a host of other garden vegetables.  We eat the beets, but tend to forego the beet tops, we eat the lettuce when it is mature.  We wait to eat the florets of broccoli and ignore the leaves.  Same for immature cabbage before it has formed a head, we decline to snip off a few tasty green, or red leaves to add an extra peppery crunch to our spring salads.

Once you start growing your own salad plots you begin to understand how much food we waste, even as gardeners.

Pansies

(Photo: almanac.com)

This year the weather is predicted to be extreme. Swinging wildly from one thing to another.  There is still so much brown in my garden it looks more like the garden of rust.  I am sadly in need of some spring color.

As a little girl, I remember my maternal grandmother planting pansies each spring.  She planted them in the same place, and always the same kind, although I don't think she had much to choose from then.  I remember asking her why pansies, why that kind...why, why why?  I'm sure I drove her absolutely crazy.  I remember her as a forceful woman, who lined up her cutting garden flowers in regimental rows.

"Why?"

"They make me happy."

There you have it.  I don't think she stopped there.  I think she probably went on about cold, long winters, too much snow.  Pansies were always the first thing she could plant out and not worry overmuch about them freezing.

Recently, my nephews and my brother came to visit, more like to check up on my condition, physical, mental, and emotional (I'm afraid these days...).  One of my nephews noticed a string of tiny silver bells strung over a doorway to my dining room.  He asked me why?  I touched them gently, and they made a happy little jingling sound like music.

"Why?"

"They make me happy."

You could see the sound made him happy, too.

So, all you gardeners out there faced with wild weather, I encourage you to plant something that simply makes you happy.