Can you tell these peas are fresh?

Lately, I catch myself mumbling to the flowers as I walk around the garden.  A global pandemic, and human reaction to it, continue to plague my thoughts.  The indignance of others, paired with misinformation, leaves me baffled and feeling helpless.

And, when the mumbling begins, out to my gardens I go.  I daresay, my flowers get a "petal" full.  But, while I "talk" to the flowers, I examine what's blooming, check for the presence of pests, and I consider and plan future landscaping maitnenance.  For instance, examination of this Sugar Snap Pea plant made me aware that there were finally some pea pods for picking. However, some little green aphids had also found the pods available for snacking on.

Continued rambling from one garden to the other, brought me to realize that the deer had eaten most of the flowerheads off my Perennial Sweet Pea.  Not producing anything edible to humans, but in the pea family also, the Perennial Sweet Pea is high on my list of floral favorites. As a teen, a lone bike ride brought me to an abandoned house.  Peppered along a rock wall were these lovely blooms that I had never seen before.  Finding their brightness and beauty among the disregarded remains of a once loved home reminded me of how in the presence of disarray some forces, like the Perrenial Sweet Pea, will continue to persevere.   Later in my thirties, I happened upon a roadside plant stand.  There among the garden-variety daylilies and hostas were a few plastic pots of Perennial Sweet Pea.  After placing my money in the honor system lock box, I returned home with all of the Sweet Pea plants there were to purchase.  My excitement over finding these plants was comparable to one who may have found treasure.  For to me, their presence in my gardens was certainly one to be treasured. 

Finally, my walk around the yard ended with my gaze falling upon the clover studding the lawn.  Having read this article on the American lawn a while back, I have come to reconsider the general maintenance and use of our own lawn.  We wait longer periods of time to mow it, for instance.  This allows for clover flowers to bloom.  In my second year of keeping honeybees, I have found that a lawn studded with dandelions and clover is not a bad thing, nor is it something I wish to use chemicals to annihilate.  Clover, I learned from a quick Google search, is also part of the Pea family (Fabaceae).  The Enclopedia Britannica states that the flowers are highly attractive to bees (as I have observed), and clover honey is a common secondary product of clover cultivation. 

I was surprised from my search to learn that the clover was, in fact, part of the pea family.  At first glance, the flowers look nothing alike.  Or do they? In photographing the clover flowerheads, it became obvious to me that each individaul flower in the sphere displayed many of the same characeristics of the larger flowers pictured above.  

My walk around the gardens didn't begin with the intention of connecting one plant to another.  It started as a diversion.  One that would "change the subject" in my brain so to speak.  If anyone watched "Family Ties" in the 80's, you may remember a certain family dinner where Mallory's boyfriend ends up in a heated argument with her father.  Eliese, the mother, in trying to change the subject, exclaims, "Can you tell these peas are fesh?" 

Thank you, peas.  I no longer remember what I was mumbling about.