Peas

You will hear, on occasion, expats from Trinidad pine for a lost land - for beaches that are gone, and trails paved over, for the slower boat to Tobago (now it's a two-hour trip, not an overnight), and island architecture washed away by a wave of Americanized design. Last week one of them named Clarence Drakes, an architect himself, happened by Calypso, the homey Trinidadian stand in the Chestnut Hill Farmers Market, and he soon fell into a deep, misty-eyed reverie. Ah, but the food, reminded his friend Ayanna Osbourne, who has family ties on the island, that's another matter: No one has torn that page from Trinidad's story.

March can be a tantalizing month for gardeners. The seeds have been ordered, the garden has been planned, and now we are held captive indoors by heavy rains or maybe even snow. Instead of fretting, turn the housebound time to good use. Sow seeds inside and follow a couple of tips from Nancy Greenwood of Wayne. Long an ardent gardener, Greenwood likes to get the earliest harvest possible from spring vegetables. For instance, she started cole crops in late February, but it is not too late to plant them now. Broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower are the earlybirds in this family, and Greenwood sows seeds of each variety under lights in her basement.

He dreamt up one of the world's biggest groups (Black Eyed Peas), penned and produced songs for some of the top albums of the last year (from Justin Timberlake, the Pussycat Dolls, John Legend and Fergie). And this week he released his first true solo CD, tagged with the populist title "Songs About Girls" and festooned with the shiny-sounding hit "You Know What It Is. " So why does the juggernaut that is Will.i.am sound so irked? Give him a second and he'll explain - heatedly.

Trashy gossip blogger Perez Hilton has had an auspiciously controversial 2009 to date. To start, there was the Miss USA 2009 pageant, for which Hilton served as a judge. During the question-and-answer session, he prodded Carrie Prejean, Miss California USA, into revealing her faith-based response to his same-sex marriage question. Later, he added a little salsa by dissing Prejean's remarks. Then there was the incident where he allegedly got socked by Polo Molina, an operations manager for Black Eyed Peas, after allegedly calling Peas front man will.

A nice thing about Mara Bros. Trattoria Ristorante is that even in the dead of winter it can make you feel as if it's spring. Aromas of fresh sauces float through the dining room, and the different dishes form a sunny, colorful pastiche. Cozy is the key dining word here; the small room seats about 25. A sloping mansard-like ceiling - bolstered by large, wooden planks separated by colorful stone and mirrored glass - lends a contrived but rustic country look. Taped Italian folk music adds to the charm.

Dear Polly: Can rosemary be grown indoors? - V.K.D. Dear V.K.D.: Rosemary certainly can be grown indoors. Fresh rosemary is such a delightful cooking herb that I think everyone who has an indoor herb garden should give it a try. It may also be grown outdoors in warm climates or outdoors in a pot during the summer in cool climates, then brought indoors for the winter. I've grown rosemary from seed, but it takes several months to get a good- sized plant that way. It can easily be grown from cuttings or root divisions for faster results.

Celebrate spring, knowing that a warm, sunny day can be followed by a frigid, cloudy one. Don't be tricked into planting too soon. For most flowering annuals, as well as vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, beans and squash, wait until the last frost date, close to Mother's Day (May 12), give or take a week depending on your planting zone. Cool-weather crops such as peas, beets, lettuce, broccoli, and cabbage can be planted outside anytime now. Start seeds indoors and out. You were planning to buy all your transplants?

WATCHING political conventions from gavel to gavel is like shoveling down platefuls of peas for many Americans. Eat them, you're told, they're good for you. Television today is like an all-you-can-eat casino buffet, though, with the peas just a click away from the chicken wings. Tens of millions of Americans are still dutifully watching democracy in action, of course, but Americans are also getting smaller portions at Comedy Central, and millions more are skipping right to dessert with "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" or Wednesday's NFL opener.

Brittany Robinson and Briana Egenlauf like to think of themselves as "two peas in a pod" up top for the Archbishop Ryan girls' soccer team. On Monday, those peas were dangerous all afternoon, both scoring goals in the Ragdolls' 2-0 win over Catholic League opponent St. Hubert. The goals couldn't have been more different for Archbishop Ryan, but they counted just the same. They were also both the product of a hardworking Ragdoll team that won the majority of 50/50 balls and pressed the St. Hubert (4-4, 3-2 Catholic League)

We have grown accustomed to - no, make that attached to - the calendar on the wall of our kitchen that reproduces the vintage drawings from something called Album Benary, an archive so foreign to us that we have long assumed (wrongly) it was of Italian extraction. It's labeled the Farmer's Market 2010 calendar, which isn't quite its actual focus: the vegetable illustrations, as carefully detailed as Audubon prints, date from 1876, when they were made by the noted seed collector and breeder Ernst Benary, a German, it turns out. Atop each month, on ivory-colored stock, are depictions, for instance, of varieties of luminous, silken onions that might be (if inflated)