So it gets to the end of summer and you have a beautiful garden full of sweet peas that look like this:

sweet-pea

Now you can show them off. Tag your garden with #sweetpeasummer on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, or email your photos directly to christine@aspenhistory.org, and you’ll be entered in our contest for a sweet award.

Sweet peas are the official flower of Aspen. Ramona Markalunas, dubbed the sweet pea of Aspen, used to encourage locals to plant them in their yards and nurture them all summer so that the town would be a burst of colorful flowers. We’re honoring her spirit and doing the same. We mailed out sweet peas to our members early in May, and they were available for pickup at The Aspen Times and Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Aspen Snowmass, so neighbors should be well armed. Now that they’re in the ground — hopefully — it’s time to grow for glory.

sweetpea

A sweet pea bush in the early 1900s.