The Pea Who Wanted to Be a Tree

In the back garden of an old brick cottage, where bees hummed like sleepy violins and dandelions tickled your ankles, there grew a line of cheerful pea plants. They climbed little sticks like eager acrobats, their green tendrils curling and stretching toward the sky.

Inside one fuzzy pod, snug as peas can be, lived a little one named Penny.

Penny was smaller than her brothers, a bit rounder than her sisters, and much quieter than all of them. While the others chattered about who would be picked first or who might end up in a school lunchbox, Penny stared through the slit in their pod and whispered something no other pea had ever said:

“I want to be a tree.”

“A tree?” giggled her sister Petal. “But peas don’t become trees, silly.”

“They become dinner,” added her brother Pip with a proud little wiggle.

Penny didn’t mind their teasing. Her dream wasn't loud or flashy. It just lived quietly in her heart like a warm ember.

She imagined herself tall and strong, her branches wide enough to hold birds’ nests and children’s secrets. She pictured squirrels playing tag in her leaves and stories carved into her bark.

She didn’t know how she’d become a tree — only that she wanted to.

One windy morning, the pod grew dry and crackly. With a little twist and a snap, it burst open, sending all the peas tumbling out.

Most rolled into the soft grass and vanished into the soil. Penny, as always, took her time. She landed beneath a lilac bush, where the earth was damp and shady.

“Maybe,” she whispered to herself, “this is where trees begin.”

And so, Penny waited.

Snow fell. Rain followed. The wind blew stories across the sky.

And deep under the ground, Penny slept and dreamed.

Spring came softly, with pink clouds and curious robins. The soil warmed. Penny stirred. Something inside her yawned and stretched. A tiny root reached downward, and a green sprout pushed up through the dirt.

It wasn’t a tree. Not yet.

But it was growing.

Penny’s shoot twirled upward, her leaves opened like arms, and her vines reached for anything to hold on to — a stick, a breeze, a little hope.

She wasn’t the tallest in the garden. She wasn’t even the biggest pea shoot. But she stood proudly.

One day, a butterfly landed on her leaf and asked, “What kind of plant are you?”

“I’m a pea,” Penny said.

“But I’m trying to grow like a tree.”

The butterfly smiled. “Well, you’ve certainly made shade for my wings.”

That summer, Penny bloomed with delicate white flowers. Each turned into a pod, and inside each pod, new little peas grew — curious and quiet and wide-eyed, just like she once was.

One especially round pea named Posie whispered, “Mama, what do you want me to be?”

Penny thought for a long time.

“I want you to grow in your own way,” she said. “Even if it’s not what the world expects. Especially then.”

Posie smiled. “Can I be a cloud?”

“If you can find a way,” said Penny, “then yes. You can be a cloud.”

By autumn, Penny’s vines were brown and brittle. The wind tugged gently at her leaves. She didn’t feel sad, though. She had lived her dream in her own quiet way. Maybe she wasn’t a towering oak — but she had stretched, and reached, and made shade. And she had passed on her dream.

The next spring, under the same lilac bush, a new shoot sprouted.

Then two.

Then three.

And high above, in a tree that really was a tree, a robin sang — the same one who once rested on Penny’s vines.

And if you listen closely, when the wind dances through the garden, you might hear her whisper:

“Grow big. Grow kind. Grow how you dream.”