Peas.

Someone must have just finished an experiment over in the Botany greenhouses: a cart packed with 6" pots of little twining plants appeared today in the Botany building hallways, surmounted by a hand-scribbled sign reading "FREE PEAS". Of course I couldn't resist -- free plants, plus somewhere to put them, is a positively irresistible combination, and there's a certain spot out by our flat's front fence that's been looking bare and inviting.

That spot has two pots' worth of Pisum sativum planted in it now. I scooped up the pots on my way out of lab, brought them home (to minimal flatmate reaction, amusingly enough: I guess they know me well enough now that an armload of plants isn't unusual), and broke out the trowel. The front garden's earth crusted over from long disuse, and a few weeds had sprouted in far corners, but it yielded to a trowel readily enough. Two small holes and two dumped pots later, I have a pale approximation of a vegetable garden.

I had almost forgotten how good it feels to accomplish something this way. Turning earth, settling in little roots, even watching my hands blacken the sink water afterwards -- well, it's been far too long since I did any gardening. I haven't even repotted that primrose yet. It felt vaguely defiant somehow. The dollar store will be the next stop, I suppose. Those peas will need something to climb.

Oh, I know that the peas will probably never make it into a flat dinner. I have no idea what experiment they were used in, for one thing; and being planted right by the front fence leaves them vulnerable each night to heaven knows what abuses from passing drunks. (The neighbors' gardens have survived intact, but any produce will have to be washed very thoroughly.) A late frost might kill them, and they might not flower and fruit til after I leave. Even if some peas do make it indoors, there probably won't be nearly enough of them. It's only a few plants.

Still, it's the first garden I've planted alone, in a place that might remotely be called "my own". Ironic that it should be in a place I'll never stay.