New items this week included celery (very small and thin compared to grocery store celery), tatsoi (seems sort of like a cross between bok choi and spinach), red onions (really oniony), sage, leaf lettuce (yum), and U-pick green beans. My son and husband were very excited about the opportunity to pick beans as our summer bean-pick week was cancelled due to heavy flooding in the field. Green beans, it seems, don't like to swim.
We reached the field this afternoon, low gray clouds hanging over the field...and low, bent people hanging over the beanrows. What a different scene from the cherry tomato rows a few feet over: instead of parents' voices advising little ones as to the correct colors to choose and folks wandering slowly scanning for their pick, the bean patch was all silence and stooping. When you are searching through leggy, leafy bushes less than two feet high for your garden take, there isn't a good opportunity for chatter. My son quietly roamed through the rows with the paper sack, looking for "easy" beans peeking out along the edges, while I dived into the middle of each bush, rummaging around until the full-grown beans showed themselves. More than once I was fooled by the bush stems themselves, and I had to move on down the row empty-handed. Late-season bean picking takes determination and patience, and I found myself thinking that these are two lessons I could stand to relearn on an almost daily basis.
My son and I met in the middle of the patch, and as I dumped my many beans into his sack of a few he said "Mom...picking beans is hard work. But they'll be really good for dinner!" If the end goal is worth enough, the work seems like less. Hmm...an order of green beans with a side of philosophy, anyone?
PS: The beans were really good for dinner!
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