When I was growing up and we lived in the hollow on the base of Fort Lewis Mountain, there was a lady named Mrs. May that lived down the road from our house. I had to walk by her house each day on my way to the bus stop at the end of our road. She had the most wonderful cottage garden I can ever remember. And she was nice enough to put up with a little girl of 5 that came to visit to admire her flowers quite often.
She had all the great old fashioned favorites: roses, hollyhocks, sweet william, marigolds, pansies and viloas, garden phlox, sunflowers, daisies, canterbury bells…you name it. Well she also had old fashioned sweet peas. Not the wild kind that come back year after year and invade the roadsides, but the kind you had to plant every year from seed and smelled like heaven on the vine.
I loved how delicate they were and how wonderful they smelled. And I remember many times her cutting a little bunch for me to take home. Needless to say, I have many very good memories of her and her garden. It’s amazing how someone can make such an impression on someone at such a young age. I am not a master gardener now, but I have spent quite a bit of time cultivating a garden of my own with Keith. And one of the things I have done is seek out the flowers that I remember from my childhood and Mrs. May’s garden.
For years I have tried to grow sweet peas from seed and have never had any luck. I have even bought sweet pea plants from nurseries yet they never amount to anything in the garden. I had finally given up, thinking I would never be able to have those wonderfully fragrant blooms in my yard. Well, leave it to Mother Nature…lo and behold, a couple of years ago a wild sweet pea vine showed up in the yard. These are the hot pink ones that you see on the roadside everywhere. I was thrilled! They are not fragrant like the old fashioned ones Mrs. May grew, but they were sweet peas none the less.
Well, the thrill did not last long when they started to take over the coneflower bed. My coneflowers feed the gold finches all winter long so I could not have that. Now Keith and I pull vines every chance we get from the coneflowers. But, while we were focused on the front coneflower bed, Mother Nature again played a role in surprising me with wild sweet peas. This time, on the hill out back near the deck. Keith and I have decided to leave them be, since they haven’t decided to take over the hil and we have been able to keep them under control.
Well, imagine my surprise this July when Mother Nature hit me with this little white gem! On the hill by the other vine that we are keeping of hot pink and magenta, this little white vine popped up out of no where. I was so excited. These even had a little fragrance. I snapped a bunch of pictures before the flowers went to seed so that I would have proof of the pure white blossoms.
I am now letting them go to seed in hopes that I will have more white sweet peas next year, and maybe more fragrant flowers to boot. Sometimes you just have to let Mother Nature have her way so that she can shower you with gifts that bring back happy memories of childhood days spent in Mrs. May’s garden.
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