Sweet Peas

In my blog on 12 April – “Feeling Frugal” – I talked about my attempts to grow sweet peas, my neighbours’ new kitten “Sweet Pea” and my quest to revive some geraniums I had over-wintered in a high-end shopping bag. The geraniums have been one of my successes – look at them now – this clearly reflects the quality of their winter abode !

However the sweet peas have been a bit of a “disaster daahling”. Only a couple of the seeds I found in my Dad’s flat germinated and their growth was stunted, which is not surprising. The new seeds I planted grew a bit and then seemed to come to a grinding halt. Some have remained vertically challenged but one or two do seem to be taking off over the last week or so. I was crestfallen though, when I visited our local RHS gardens a fortnight ago and saw their impressive displays – not only have they grown to about 2 metres high, but are also bearing masses of blooms – where did I go wrong?

Talking of sweet peas, last week I was on yet another work related Zoom call when I saw a WhatsApp message pop up from my neighbour Victoria. “Cat awol”. There was nothing I could do at that moment but I could feel myself becoming agitated as I could hear her calling for Sweet Pea – her voice becoming more and more distressed. Just as my meeting ended Grumbling Rose burst into our home office wearing only the top half of his running gear – “you need to get Albert round to the park to help Elizabeth with the cat – I’ve got to go, I’m late”. I raced out, grabbed a cat crate from Albert and hot footed it to the park behind our houses. There I found Victoria – she’d only had the pot taken off her broken wrist 3 days ago, the other arm still badly sprained. She was clinging on to Sweet Pea who was curled into a rigid ball shape while managing to simultaneously hiss and scratch. I’m not sure how, but Victoria managed to ram Sweet Pea into the crate with brute force and slam the door shut – I tried to fasten it but in a nano second Sweet Pea ejected at the speed of light and ran towards their back fence – too high for her to climb and no way in underneath. Victoria by this stage was in a state of shock – probably not helped by my expletive explosions as Sweet Pea escaped. We stalked poor frightened Sweet Pea and saw her go under the fence of another neighbour. Then began the shouting to Albert “go round to Geoff’s garden and take some treats Albert” – no answer – we could no longer see Sweet Pea but she hadn’t come back our way. Relief eventually came when Albert shouted – “she’s here – in the house”! I was exhausted and retreated to my garden with a glass of prosecco.