snack time

I planted the sugar snaps in the least fertile area of the field. In mid-April I dug shallow two shallow trenches, hacking through sod and roots with a triangle hoe, and I backfilled with compost from the restaurant, which was rich and black and flecked with bits of egg shell.

It was the first thing I planted. I didn’t expect much. I put up a lame, cursory sort of trellis made of skinny oak stakes and scraps of old deer fencing my friend Jeff gave me and went about my business.

The peas have since determined that they love it here and have been growing like gangbusters, loaded with blossoms and pods. Every week I chase them with more stakes and lengths of twine as they pass three feet, then four, then five, climbing to the sun. The trellis looks like some sort of earnest and unfunny art installation, a melange of plastic netting and tangled string. Every week, the place is less of a garden and more of a farm..