Sweet Dreams

I’ve been having some trouble finding the happy this week, so I looked through the photos on my phone for some inspiration.  On a cold, cold night, most of the photos I found that made me happy were from summers past, and most were of flowers.  To anyone who knows me, that won’t be a big surprise.

This one reminded me of the year I decided I wanted to grow sweet peas.  I had been listening to the garden show on the radio every Sunday.  One week someone called in who called herself the sweet pea lady.  She talked about how she gets the seeds from the UK, then what she does to get them started early.  She sells her sweet pea plants, and I decided that I wanted to go to her greenhouse.

It meant a road trip for my husband and I.  Her greenhouse is about a 2 hour drive away, so we decided to make a day of it.  And what a beautiful drive it turned out to be.  It was a beautiful sunny day. We stopped at a lake for a picnic, then carried on our way, and eventually, after following a sign blown over by a strong wind – a very common occurrence there – we followed a winding road until we got there.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t a commercial greenhouse.  It was her house, on an acreage, with a greenhouse in the yard.  She gave her phone number on the radio show so people could call her for directions, so I had called ahead.  I didn’t understand why she needed to have an idea of when we were coming so she could be there when we arrived.  It was a greenhouse, after all, right?

But it was at her house.  When we got out of the car she came over to say hello and we chatted about the sweet peas, how she grows them, what her favourites were…  I thought all sweet peas were tall vining plants.  Not so, I was about to learn.  She showed me shorter varieties, which were just adorable.  Soon I was in the greenhouse having a wonderful time perusing the plants.  None had bloomed yet.  They were smallish plants with the variety marked on the cups they were planted in.

As I recall, I bought a lot of sweet peas that day – not exactly surprising – including some for my mom and my mother in law.  And I came home and made a plan for how I was going to plant them.  They were going to be beautiful.  And they were.  Not all of them grew up to bloom, but the ones that did were beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that I wanted to do it again the following year. Only this time, I was going to try starting them from seed myself.

One cold evening I sat myself in front of the computer with my electric blanket on my lap, and I went through the selection of sweet pea seeds online from a company in the UK.  It was so hard to decide because they were all beautiful.  In the end, I bought enough packets of seeds that the grower included a free packet of poppy seeds.  Bonus!

But before they arrived, I got to work planning.  I planned based on colour and height.  The tall ones in the back, and the shorter varieties in front. (Of course.  It would be silly putting the tall ones in front.)  I have one small flowerbed that I don’t plant anything in that will come back the following year.  It’s hard sometimes because it’s prime real estate for a girl who loves plants, but it’s my sandbox.  I get to do something different with it every year.  And that year I was going to plant sweet peas that I started from seed.

I documented the progress of the seeds, the dates when I started them, when they started to grow… I noted which ones did well, and which ones didn’t grow.  And when it was time to plant them, I had SO. Many. Plants.  (This still happens.  It was by no means a one time incident.)

They were beautiful.  They really were.  I was so proud of what I had done, but also disappointed about the ones that didn’t grow.

It was a lot of work, but it was worth it.  I tried something new, learned a lot, and most of all, learned that I could do it.

Another year I decided that I would try direct sowing them.  Not starting them early in the house, just putting the seeds in the ground and taking care of them from there.  Someone with much more experience than I had told me that she knew someone who planted their seeds outside on April 15 every year and always had beautiful sweet peas.  Great!  I would do the same.

So I did.  But once again, first I planned how I was going to plant them, based on their colours.  There would be blocks of colour.  Black, white, red, blue.  It didn’t quite work the way I had planned.  Some didn’t grow, so I put other plants in there.  And it was lovely.

A few years later, I decided that I would try again.  I had a few packets of seeds left over from a previous year.  I decided to do things a little differently this year.  I would take what I had, put all the seeds in a bowl, mix them up, plant them, and see what happened.  I didn’t space them the way it says on the seed packet.  I just planted them right next to each other.  (I’m such a rebel, aren’t I?)  There were probably over 100 seeds in that flowerbed that year.  I watered them and watched them.  And they grew.  And grew.  And grew.  I trained the little plants up the trellises, giving them a place to climb, and as they bloomed I cut them to bring inside.  Cutting the flowers from sweet peas makes them bloom even more, so even though it hurt me a little – or a lot – to cut those first beautiful blooms I did it.  And it paid off.

Soon there was a wall of sweet peas.  It was gorgeous.  Just like I had always imagined it should be, just like I had seen growing up.  There was no plan.  I tossed them in a bowl and let nature take its course.  Apparently, I should have done that in the first place.  I tried it again the following year, and it didn’t really work.  A whole section didn’t grow and I had to fill the space with something completely different. But that can also be part of the fun.  It’s all a big experiment. (In fairness, the seeds got lost at Customs for a few months. Goodness only knows what they went through along the way.)

I don’t know yet what I will plant there this year.  It may sound ridiculous to some to be thinking about it in February, but that’s also part of the fun.  The dreaming.  Imagining what is possible.  Imagining the sun and warmth on cold winter days and nights.

So, I try to balance the planning – and possible overthinking – with leaving room for some spontaneity when I am plant shopping.  I buy the plants I see at the garden centre that I just can’t walk away from even though I don’t know yet exactly where they will go or what they will go with.  They are usually plants that will only be with me for one season, so they give me joy without the pressure of finding a permanent home for them.

I’ve had some trouble finding the happy this week, but thinking about the sun, seeing the colours of the flowers and the green of the grass has me feeling better.  It makes me want to plan because that’s who I am, but I think on these cold days – at least for a while – I will try to just enjoy the dreaming.