Watch the Peas Grow

One of the things I love about gardening is watching plants grow. Sometimes is seems like it takes forever for a plant to show any new growth and when it does, it feels like such a triumph. And then there are times like the past few weeks, when things grow like crazy and it seems impossible for anything to grow that fast. Friends who grew up on farms in the mid-west  have told me they could almost hear the corn growing.

Hoop house peas on April 22

For me, peas are a great example. When I pick peas, I walk up and back down the rows, picking both ways. It is easy to miss a pea pod, hiding behind some leaves, so it helps to look from different directions. This past week, when I was picking, I could swear that the peas grew while I was going back and forth down the rows. I picked up the row, and then when I came back, peas I had passed up as too small were now ready to pick. I couldn’t have missed that many peas, could I?

Hoop house snow peas on May 23