Wednesday, October 12, 2022

Thankful For the Little Things

Thanksgiving isn't very far away.  It is my favorite holiday.  The others have all gotten so commercialized and lost a lot of their original intent.  Thankfulness is a virtue that is lacking in this day and age.  It does a soul good just to be appreciative to the Creator for the goodness that He showers over us.  We are told to count our blessings, name them one by one.

Today, I'll name one of them.  Fresh green beans.  Some call them snap beans.  Whatever you call them, what a treat they are!  It's one of my favorite things in the garden.  We planted a fall crop of them - two rows.  One of them Contender Green beans and the other, Roma II Italian beans.  Despite a few pests still eating on the leaves in the hot weather (still upper 80's), the fall crop has been healthy.  We are about 21 inches behind where we should be, so it is dry.  If I hadn't been turning on the water sprinkler every other day, these wouldn't be quite so lush and green, but maybe the composted chicken manure I collected from beneath the roosts and fed them with had something to do with it as well.


I like growing them in the fall also because one of my favorite Thanksgiving side dishes is fresh picked green beans wrapped in bundles of bacon and cooked in the oven.  Today I picked the first crop of green beans of the fall.  The Contender variety wasn't quite ready, but the Roma II Italian beans were coming in strong.

Picking beans, I notice as I get older, is getting harder and harder on the back!  Next year I'll try to space the rows out so that I can sit on a little chair with wheels and push myself while seated instead of crouched over.  Once done, I put them in the sink and washed them up read good.  I'll put them in the fridge and we'll eat on these and enjoy them.

You can see the difference in the two varieties below.  Generally, the Contenders are a producer of great volume while the Roma II's are more flavorful.  They're flat, wide beans.  Delicious.  I gave some to Russ and he was eating them raw.  

Tricia has been away for a couple days visiting her family in Texas, so I figured I would send her a photo to visually communicate to her what I've been doing:

She got a kick outta that!  The beans are loaded with blooms and small beans so hopefully they'll continue to produce through the fall.  I'm thankful for green beans!

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