~*~
Picking beans so easily becomes tedium
if we aren’t paying attention,
but I’m finding that this meditative task
gives me a chance to think about
the more important things in life,
like poetry and wild geese
and blessings of abundance.
~*~
As you may have seen on Facebook, the beans are producing a bumper crop this week, which means I’m picking them every day. It does feel tedious at times, but I also enjoy watching wobbly Vs of geese fly overhead. And when I begin to despair over how many beans I have to pick, I try to draw my mind back to what a blessing it is to have this much fresh food, produced by the living soil in my backyard and a bit of work from my own hands.
I discovered that dragon tongue bush beans taste as good as they look and have an excellent texture. Sadly, like other purple beans, they do lose their coloring when cooked and become a pale yet pretty yellow-green, as you can see in the photo at the top of this post. They would look pretty spectacular in a raw salad, though!
Today, I’d like to introduce you to the tomato variety I’m most excited about this year: Aunt Glee’s big pink heirloom tomato. This is a family heirloom I didn’t even know existed until my mom’s cousin handed me an envelope of seeds last summer when he stopped by the farmer’s market.
I planted the seeds indoors in March, then eagerly watched their progress until, weeks after the plants had been set out in the garden, green globes appeared on the vines sometime in July. The fruits grew bigger, and bigger … and bigger. The “big pink” in the name is no joke: the first Aunt Glee’s tomato I harvested weighed in at 1.7 pounds. When I finally sliced it up for the first tomato sandwich of the summer, I found that it was delightfully meaty and the perfect size for sandwiches.
You can find both dragon tongue beans and Aunt Glee’s big pink heirloom tomatoes at the New Market Farmer’s Market tomorrow afternoon, along with other heirloom tomatoes, tender gray zucchini, contender (green) beans, and Polish white garlic.
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