1.2.3. Sweet Peas

 "Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight; With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white..."-John Keats

 Last year there WERE NO sweet peas. Maybe a few straggled in. But nothing much. I ripped out the dead vines by July.

Two years ago, I was picking mason jars and pitchers full. 

 This year they are late.

 Very Very late.....

 Five weeks later than usual.

 Until finally three popped up and bloomed.

 Sweet Peas are quite hardy.  They will grow anywhere.

 But this year they are hesitant.

 Most of the time, I have a hard time keeping up.Picking quickly so the vines will create more blooms.

 So far, this year I have found 3. 1.2.3. Blooms.

 My mother would grow sweet peas in pretty ordinary dirt. Never failed.

 Last year it was boiling hot all the time.The Sweet Peas fried.

 This year it was hot  in May. Sizzle. Sizzle. And cool in June.

 I think they got confused. I think they thought it was time for a siesta.Even the strawberries didn't seem to know it was time to grow. I got 4 strawberries this June. Count them. 1.2.3.4.

 The green growing things have a mind of their own.

 And today I still have my 3 Sweet Peas. 1.2.3. Maybe FOUR  later on this week. And  they still smell as wonderful as if they were in the hundreds....

 "Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation's tears in shoulder blades..." -Boris Pasternak