Lathyrus odoratus..."He said that her friends just call her 'Sweet Pea.'" Oh, it's January, the month of seed catalogs, and my eyes will be bigger than my stomach—that is, the contents of all the packets of sweet pea seeds that I'll put in the shopping cart will overcrowd the modest four-foot trenches allotted to them alongside the undulating arched trellis that bisects one of my three raised beds. The heirlooms, the Spencers, the one from the monk, the new varieties and hybrids—they are all irresistible.
I've made my share of mistakes in tending to my sweet peas over the seasons, though not the obvious one of letting the Midwestern summer heat and humidity get to them—as long as I'm diligent with watering and feeding, and happily, obsessively picking off the buds as soon as they're on the wane and before they form...peas...they'll chug along through the first touches of light frost and beyond. No, the mistakes I've made have been unforced errors: waiting (i.e. procrastinating, then letting time slip away) later than I should to get the seeds in the ground; forgetting to soak or scrape the seeds before getting them in the ground; pinching the seedlings to encourage branching when they are crowded enough already and this will only delay them reaching the trellis; noticing too late that they've grown so vigorously and thickly that the trellis is about to...too late! topple over.
But each growing season, the sweet peas manage to survive that season's malministrations and reward the garden, and the gardener, with their beauty of form, color, and especially scent, like no other. From the first signs of successful germination, to how could these things have grown three feet already and where is the twine to tether them to the trellis,
Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight:
With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white,
And taper fingers catching at all things,
To bind them all about with tiny rings.
Keats, "I stood tip-toe upon a little hill," 1817.