Planting peas

Planting peas. It used to be an impossibly long job. My grandpa doesn't have a huge garden, but he plants almost all of it in peas. My hands were always too small to hold enough peas to last more than a few feet and my fingers were too clumsy to get the peas to work together and come out one at a time like they were supposed to. Consequently, my rows tended to be erratic and getting them somewhat straight and spaced was not easy. Every year my grandpa would have to show all us boys how far apart to space the peas. It wasn't quite an inch, but it wasn't much less. I remember thinking that they had to be perfect or somehow they wouldn't grow right. I remember making a little measuring stick to check myself. It didn't help much. Sooner or later the little shriveled seeds either grouped together or spaced themselves too far and I'd have to go back and push them around and add a few here or take out a few there. It seems silly now that such a simple job as dropping peas could be so hard, but it was. It used to take Greg, Josh, Grandpa, and myself almost two hours to get the job done. It seemed like forever. Today it took Josh, grandpa, and I almost one hour (Greg was “sick” and had to stay home and sleep – the lazy thing!:)

Two hours is a long time when you're little and bending over a boring row trying to get peas to obey. However, we weren't exactly the most diligent workers back then. We'd work for a little while and then one of us would have to “go get a drink.” Interpreted that meant that we were going inside to get some juice and hope that grandma would detain us for a while. These frequent “water” breaks were supplemented by all the times grandma saved us the trouble of going inside and would bring the juice or popsickles out to us. It is amazing how many water breaks it takes to get a job done on a nice spring day. Of course, all these water breaks pretty soon led to bathroom breaks which were also good excuse for an escape. Pretty soon Greg and I figured out that all the breaks only made the job take longer and we buckled down and stuck to it. It took Josh a little bit longer to wean himself. Of course he always was the baby of the family and grandma tended to spoil him a little bit more than us! (Sorry Josh!). I remember, not so many years ago, when he would still get up from his row and try to sneak off. If' we caught him he would say sheepishly “I need to get a drink.” We didn't believe it then and always hooted and gave him a hard time about it about going in to get a snack and skipping out of work. We still do. (I reminded him about it again today even though he hasn't done it for the past two or three years. He threw sticks at me. Note to self: “I'm going to have to stop that before he gets bigger than me!). It's one of those things that made planting fun. You see, it wasn't that we totally hated planting – in fact it could be downright fun, especially when grandpa started telling corny jokes or singing “rubber ducky” in a country slightly out-of-tune twangy voice – it was just that we got a little bored with it sometimes.

The funny thing about peas is that you it never feels like it's time to plant them. They're always the first thing to go and it doesn't depend so much on the temperature as the dampness of the ground. If the ground is dry enough in march, you plant no matter what the temperature is. I can remember planting them in short short sleeves and bare feet with sweaty hands that got covered in whatever the seeds are coated with and other times would be sweatshirts, shoes, and cold hands that made the job even harder. However, not matter what the weather, there was always the meal at the end of the job. If we were fast enough, we could be done by lunch time and we'd go in for soup and sandwiches, joking and laughing (sometimes about Josh!) and enjoying that good feeling of being done. I remember one time when Grandma bought a frozen cherry pie and a sale and decided this was the special occasion to break it out. It was awful! The cherries had been frozen way to long and the whole thing was soggy and tasteless. Grandpa, who to this day will eat almost anything to avoid wasting it, said we it would be best if we flushed it! We still tease grandma about that awful pie. She just shakes her head and says ruefully that she'll never buy another frozen cherry pie.

This year there was no cherry pie or even a meal. Instead of her giving us dinner like she used to, now we usually have to take one up for her. It's strange to see things getting so much harder for her while at the same time they get so much easier for me. Planting peas used to be a hard job for us and it felt like a real accomplishment when we got it done. Now it seems so easy. Making lunch used to be so easy for her. Now simply catching her breath is an accomplishment. I really think it was easier for us to plant that entire garden than it was for her to sit in her chair and breathe. What used to be a hard job for us is suddenly easy. What used to be an easy job for her is suddenly hard. I don't know why it has to happen this way, but I guess it's part of life. It made me realize that it won't go on forever.

I'll miss planting that garden when we don't have to do it anymore. Isn't it strange how what starts out as a chore soon turns into a traditional you'll eventually miss? I can think of several things we used to do that I hated at the time which I would love to do again. I guess that means I'm getting old (perish the thought!).