Peas and Thank You's

My sugar snaps have started coming up. I started them late, and it looks like I should have gone ahead and watered them earlier today despite the prediction of "afternoon showers likely," but they'll probably be ok.

There is one main reason why I planted so many:


This is my beautiful elder granddaughter. What is probably obvious is the middle-schooler attitude in all its glory. What's not obvious is that she has what I call a white foods diet: Things like plain pasta, cup-a-soups, chicken strips, and vanilla ice cream dominate the extremely short list of the foods she's willing to eat. Even the few fresh foods that she loves must be whitened: strawberries must be coated in sugar and strips of raw green pepper (never red, and not cooked) must be doused in salt.

Somehow, though she was already of the mindset that new and different foods were likely to poison her, several years ago I managed to convince her to try a sugar-snap pea directly off the vine (no salt!) and a love affair was born that I intend to nurture as much as I can. I don't think that a single sugar-snap pea grown in my garden has ever made it into the house, especially when she is staying with us.

Earlier today I pointed out the number of sugar snap pea plants that were coming up, and she got a big grin on her face, jumped up and down, and squealed, "ohhhhhh thank you, Abuela!!" It's a really good feeling to know that something from my garden can get a response that I thought at this age was reserved for things like, "here are front row tickets to see the Jonas Brother's Band" or "here's your new high-end cell phone with unlimited text messaging."