How are you all? I hope you are all well.
It’s a long time since I last posted. I took a quick snap of some sweet peas from the garden today, and my mind wandered back to a very early blog post I wrote about sweet peas flourishing so late in the season. The memory prompted me to pitch up here.
It’s years since I’ve grown sweet peas, they seem to need lots of tender love and care and coaxing in the month of May, and into early June, which is our favoured time to take off in the campervan for a few weeks. It always seems a big enough ask of our neighbour to take care of the cat the hens and the house plants, without complicating matters with tender garden plants.
A ‘big van trip’ wasn’t something we wanted to do in May, with the vaccination programme still rolling out.
So I thought I’d give them ago if I was at home to look after them. Despite the random weather this year, they have thrived*, the perfume has lost its intensity now, but they are still throwing a party in the kitchen!
We might not have had a ‘big van trip’ but we did get away at the end of September, to Scotland, and yes it was our lovely neighbour continuing to pick the blooms in our absence that has led to this glorious flush of blooms. I hope you have neighbours as generous as ours.
* I tried the same with dahlias this year too, disaster, not a bloom. Which is a shame, I’ve always loved a dahlia. Can you see me?
Uphilldowndale 
October 11, 2021 at 8:11 pm
Good to hear from you again. My sweet pea story is that I planted white ones some 20 years ago. The next year and every year after they sprouted hot pink flowers until this year. I had my house painted and now they were destroyed.
October 12, 2021 at 4:39 pm
Oh no, how sad, were your sweet peas scented, the perennial variety grown in the UK sadly doesn’t have a scent
October 11, 2021 at 10:11 pm
Good to see that you were lucky enough to go to Scotland. Our dahlias here have done brilliantly this year. They started a bit late but are lasting very well.
October 12, 2021 at 12:19 am
So good to see you! I don’t think I’ve ever been in the presence of sweet peas, but they sure are pretty. If they smell as good as they look, I’d have them in my garden and kitchen, too!
October 12, 2021 at 4:36 pm
They smell even prettier than they look. A popular flower for wedding, but a nightmare to work with, they have a short vase life and hardly any life at all out of water! Only really suitable for hand tied bouquets that are kept in water until the very last moment.
October 12, 2021 at 6:48 am
Welcome Back!
October 12, 2021 at 9:08 am
The sweet peas look gorgeous and your neighbours sound great. When you wrote that they come in to do jobs such as feeding the cats it suddenly struck me how much of a dog owner I’ve become. We wouldn’t leave our pooches home alone for a month, even though we’ve got a dog flap. They’d be far too lonely, but cats wouldn’t. I’d forgotten that about them. It seems strange now.
I like your house picture. Not many people have good photos of places they’ve lived.
October 12, 2021 at 3:15 pm
Welcome Back, I’ve missed your posts.