Bean Harvest

This is my second picking of string beans. The first harvest was slightly smaller. (We planted eight plants.) I picked some today that were a little small because I want to promote more growth. We steamed the few we got yesterday with some purple string beans (an heirloom variety) I bought from the Farmer’s Market. Yummy! From our garden so far, we’ve had lettuce, spinach, green beans, and a few snap peas I ate straight off the vine. We’ve been eating really well from the Farmer’s Market — fresh limas, new potatoes, cilantro, eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes, blackberries, and fresh eggs. I even tried Kohrabi and Swiss Chard. I liked them both, but they weren’t big hits with the family.

Besides yardwork, the other big job the boys have this summer is tackling some painting jobs. Richard got them all started on Sunday scraping paint from the wood siding on the front of the house. They’ll be scraping and cleaning all week, ready for caulking and priming on the weekend. Needless to say this is not a popular job around here, but somebody’s got to do it and three people in particular have a lot of time on their hands. The front of the house looks very strange without the shutters.

I have the Growing Patterns manuscript back with the changes from copy editing. I’m going through them carefully and doing re-writes where appropriate. It’s exciting to be working on the book again. I am also making final arrangements for next month’s trip to Chicago for the American Library Association conference.