Planting peas in a thicket
I’m so happy I ignored my list of things to do inside this weekend and got busy with starting the garden. Lila helped me to rake off one of the big beds next door in the in-laws yard, and we planted Dwarf Grey Snow Peas and Sugar Snaps, Easter Egg Radish and Bright Lights Chard.
I pulled off most of the leaves, but left the layer of straw, just tried to push it aside for planting and then raked it back across a little bit in the hopes that it will deter those blasted black squirrels. Methinks we’ll be putting up a fence this year. That’s a big pain in the ass.
Lila was such a trooper dragging branches out of the giant brush pile and helping me push them into the soft soil to make a little thicket for the peas to climb.
We finished just in the nick of time, too. As we propped our garden tools against the giant oak, the first raindrops began to fall. It rained most of the night and next morning, soaking the seeds and saving me the trouble of humping the hoses up from the basement and linking them all together to get them next door.
On Sunday, Chris and our neighbor and neighbor’s brother cut down three more of those dead or dying scrub Cherry trees—the ones that were blocking most of the sunlight to the tractor-made garden bed that I’m hoping to use for greens and carrots (next week?). Now the woods offically looks like a logging camp, but we’re a few steps closer to making room for that shed. I’d show you a picture of that, but my iPhoto is so clogged, I can’t upload any more pictures until I clean out the 1432 onto CDs.
It’s meant to be about 70* today with thunderstorms. Then the next four days it’s dropping back down into the mid to high 30s and snowing. I had a feeling we could expect more cold and snow in April. I’m secretly thrilled because it means that it’ll be too wet when we get home from work for Lila to play outside so I can re-focus my attention to the piles that have accumulated on the dining room table, in the living room, and yes, I know…the basement. Maude on a stick, this basement.
"In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of autumn and winter before any thought will subside; we are sensible that behind the rustling leaves, and the stacks of grain, and the bare clusters of the grape, there is the field of a wholly new life, which no man has lived; that even this earth was made for more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the hues of October sunsets, we see the portals to other mansions than those which we occupy."
~Henry David Thoreau
April 3rd, 2007 at 8:27 am
Kelly,
I just started reading your blog this week and I love it! I’m a city girl myself (Houston, LA, now DC) who longs to get back to the Midwest, to rediscover what fun really is! Planting peas looks like fun to me - especially with Lila as a helper!
I too have a declutter challenge ahead of me. I’m trying to stay motivated by picturing what my basement will look like, how inviting it will feel, once all is neat and tidy. I also think about how I will treat myself (maybe some real french vanilla ice cream?) when its all over.
Have a great day!
April 3rd, 2007 at 9:41 am
Mmmm….chard.
I love Lila’s tights. And her smile. Great picture!
April 4th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
sounds like a good time! i cant wait to start my patio porch. it wont be much, but it’s the first outdoor space I’ve ever had.
April 4th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Wait a minute, you live next door to your in-laws? How did I miss this big detail for a whole year? Geeze, pay attention much, Angelina?
That’s a great picture of Lila and it’s so wonderful when the young kids help out.
I might have to try out your thicket approach to peas. Seems much easier than all the other methods of staking I can think of.
April 6th, 2007 at 10:33 am
That is the sweetest, sweetest picture of Miss Lila.
April 6th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Hey, StarXLR8, welcome! And thanks for the kind words. I’ll be over to visit you soon…and I think ice cream is a wonderful treat for hard work.
merseydotes-thanks! she’s so into her tights, has a dozen pairs.
Angelina, Yep. When the property right next door came up for sale last year (back yards abutt, two houses down by the road between our properties that have half-depth lots) we knew it was time to follow our gut and get out of that awfully depressed area we were living in and get back to town. We knew Chris’ dad’s health was declining fast and mom’s right behind him, so it’s good that we can just pop in to help rather than drive in.
The thicket idea came from the book Crocket’s Victory Garden. You sow the peas in a wide shallow trench, just sprinkle them in randomly, a couple inches between if you can. Then push the branches in along the outer edges and into each other. Looks so charming and such a great way to use all of the wind fall.
sandra-thanks toots. she was particularly sweet that day.