Beauty in the Mundane--Purple Hull Peas

• Who can find a virtuous woman? her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• With her hands she planteth a vineyard

I know it seems as though I'm pea obsessed lately.  I've done posts on picking and shelling peas, on putting them up for the freezer, and one a while back on how I cook them from the freezer, even one on making a veggie-burger from left-over peas. There's just something so fascinating about finding beauty in the mundane, everyday matters of life, and what is more basic and everyday than food? 

My parents have gardened most of my life, and both sets of grandparents before them.  I know for sure that at least one set of great-grandparents were sharecroppers, and my maternal grandmother talked often of working in the field alongside her "Poppa", because she had older sisters who could help inside the house.  She was the best pea-sheller, and I don't think she ever tired of "putting up" vegetables, or canning fruit or making jelly. So I've been around gardening my whole life, and my husband and I even gardened a little "back in the day", but I don't remember paying much attention to the plants themselves until a couple of years ago when I moved back home and did my very first raised bed garden.  My husband was working out-of-state, and this my very first "all my own" attempt at gardening.  I'll never forget how excited I felt as I planted seeds and saw them actually come up, and form flowers and then actual real-life fruits and vegetables!  The beauty and complexity of it all amazed me. 

We messed around and didn't get a garden started this spring, but we've already been discussing trying to get our raised beds ready to plant some things for fall.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd share my fascination with the purple hull pea just one more time.  These are from my daddy's garden.

Maestro, from the top, please. 

Unfortunately for this year's harvest, although the plants were full of bloom and lots of pods formed, many of them turned purple without really filling out.  See the two in the upper lefthand corner, above--a lot of them had "skips", or even only a couple of peas in the whole pod. 

Nature is awesome in all of her splendor, isn't she, good and bad, but whoever can watch a garden grow and not believe in design by an intelligent and deliberate Creator is just--well, I don't even know what to say.

I hope you enjoyed His symphony. 

Until next time...

This post is linked to:
Creative Home Acre Blog Hop at Back to the Basics
Make Your Home Sing Monday at Mom's the Word
Garden Tuesday at Sidewalk Shoes
Bloomin Tuesday at Thyme in the Garden
Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage