The garden is in full swing again, and we’re at the ‘buried in beans’ stage. I’m blanching and freezing and pickling, and still the beans keep coming. I’m starting to dream about beans. So you can imagine my freaked-out chagrin last week when I found a bean in my bed.
I’d like to say I have no idea how it got there, but the truth is I’m pretty sure I know. Freshly-picked string beans are like VelcroTM: They’re covered with microscopic hairs that cling to everything, particularly synthetic fabrics like fleece and yoga pants. Also, to human hair.
Yes, there is a reason why I know that.
I originally discovered the VelcroTM-like properties of beans back in the dark days when I still had to wear business suits and attend meetings to make a living. I had been to an important business luncheon and had schmoozed appropriately. Afterward, I retreated to my car with a measure of pride: I had gotten through the entire luncheon without committing any social gaffes or spilling anything on my nice clothes.
I let my head fall back on the headrest as I blew out a relieved sigh, and my upturned gaze snagged on my reflection in the rearview mirror.
Oh.
Shit, no.
Yep, I had a green bean lodged in the ends of my long hair. At some point I must have leaned too close to my plate, and its perfidious little hairs had latched on.
I mentally replayed the conversations I’d had at the luncheon and concluded (with my usual semi-delusional optimism) that nobody had noticed. Or maybe they were all just people with superhuman self-control. In any case, nobody raised an eyebrow and/or pointed out that I had a renegade legume attached to my person.
So, it was with a sense of rueful déjà vu that I picked the offending bean out of my bedsheets last week. It brought back a cringeworthy memory; but at least the bean didn’t get lodged in any truly embarrassing personal places.
That would have been a little tricky to explain to Hubby.
Anybody else ever unwittingly hosted a sneaky vegetable?
Author Diane Henders 
I snorted at the lunch bean scene. Having grown up on a farm where vegetable picking was my chore I totally get the Velcro capabilities of the garden bean. Cheeky little huggers. Time to tie that hair back girl. At least if it’s beans at lunch.
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That’s the truth! I’m definitely ‘over’ storing convenient snacks in my hair for later. 😉
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I can’t say my veggies or fruits ever decided to cling to me, but had some spiky weed thingy (heck if I know what it was called) stick to my socks a few times when hiking. I guess I live a dull, dull life! The worst that’s ever left “attached” to me might be various bits of food. Or green shins after mowing the lawn. You do have some monster plants there, though! A past photo came up on my phone from several years ago, with 7 ft. tall tomato plants in the garden, and nice bushy pepper plants. My last year of the garden was so pathetic in comparison–just about everything died by July from mildew.
BTW, we’ve been amusing ourselves here for the past few nights–the big motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota is in progress (started last weekend, ends this coming weekend), and there are four cameras in the downtown area catching the action. (Search YouTube for “UDrive Tech LIVE Streaming” and they should appear.) Great for people watching, and kiddo and I drove past Sturgis twice on our road trips, both times the weekend before it started. Somehow I picture Hellhound in his element here! 😁
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I could totally see Hellhound at Sturgis! 🙂 I’ve known about Sturgis for a few decades, and I’ve often thought it would be a blast to experience. Then I look at all the people and traffic crammed into that little area and go, “NOPE! Not my thing AT ALL.” It’s fun to see the live video, though. I tuned in at about 9:30 PM local, and it’s still packed!
Quite a few of our veggies have already given their all and packed it in for the season due to the extreme (for us) heat. After 60 days of drought, we finally got 1/4″ of rain a couple of days ago, but that’s all we’re going to get. Tomorrow we’re back into the heat warnings, and we’re predicted for 34C/93F for a few days. At least it’s not over 40C… this time.
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I only learned about Sturgis after we drove past it on our road trip out to Yellowstone in 2017, the weekend before the rally started. The name stuck in my mind because we have a Sturgis in Michigan. Big enough to have a Walmart, but small enough that you can travel the length of the town in about four minutes. Perhaps it considers itself a sister city to its counterpart in South Dakota, as it has a Harley dealer just outside of the downtown area. The South Dakota Sturgis isn’t that big either, but as you probably could tell from the live video, the town is built around that biker rally!
We don’t care for the large crowds either, especially during these uncertain times. We might swing through Sturgis at some point just to say we’ve seen it, but we’ll be doing it on four wheels and decidedly not dressed in leather!
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Again, I’m a very visual thinker, so getting a bean “Velcro’d ” to your hair had me cracking up…..(I’m taking head hair here….just to clarify)!! Your garden is a mind blower with the size of those plants, but it is that time of year!! Great post!! Thanks for sharing!!
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Thanks, Kirt! And thanks for clarifying about the ‘head hair’, too. If it were any other kind of hair, no amount of brain bleach could erase that visual! (It’d probably make a good story, though.) 😉
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So funny, Diane! You’d be a riot to have as a colleague, neighbor, friend, or – in your hubby’s case – wife! Never a boring moment.
I guess all that rain made the garden get a little bit out of hand? Do huge plants produce huge vegetables? I’m always amazed and impressed with what your garden produces these summer months. I remember the photos and struggles with cucumbers and tomatoes in the past and I hope the bean extravaganza will end on positive note! What’s something new you will try with them? Bean juice? Bean patties? Come on!? 🙂
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LOL! I’m adventurous when it comes to food, but even I draw the line at bean cider. 😉 We’re actually in the throes of a vicious drought here – not a drop of rain for 60 days straight. We’re thanking our lucky stars we put in the irrigation pond a couple of years ago. And yes, the huge plants are producing huge veggies — I don’t dare turn my back on the zucchini plants. In a single day, a modest 6″ zuke doubles its length and diameter!
And thanks for the vote of confidence. I like to think Hubby is entertained by me. It’s probably closer to ‘driven nuts’, but ‘entertained’ is a much nicer word.
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Your garden is incredible. The height of the corn and sunflowers. Amazing. Our beans and corn are done but we are swamped with cucs and tomatoes.
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I’ve been feeding all the neighbours with our leftover cucumbers and zucchini for weeks, but our corn and tomatoes are just starting. We ate the first four delicious cobs today. YUM! 🙂
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We’ve given away buckets of tomatoes, zucchini and cucs. We need more friends who live in town. We have 30 litres of tomato juice and 30 litres of dill pickles. There are another four pails of tomatoes waiting to be processed into juice. This year they yielded like crazy. Other years we barely get enough.
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Same with us. Two years ago I even made hard cider out of the extra tomatoes. (It was surprisingly tasty, too — crystal-clear, fizzy, and champagne-coloured.) Last year? Barely enough tomatoes to can and make paste for the year. Fingers crossed for another bumper crop this year!
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Wow! them’s some big veggies.
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Yep! As long as they stay confined to the garden, everything will be fine; but if they start creeping toward the house, it’s machete time! 😉
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If they start running toward the house, it would be flame thrower time …
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Your garden is going gang busters while ours continues to sneak a bit of early Springdom in.
The seeds of Forget Me Nots put velcro to shame. And are impossible to remove (like some memories).
I have done the spider dance more than once. Fortunately I quite like them so my dances are MUCH less frenetic than my partner’s version. You escaped a business lunch without food spillage? Consider me genuflecting in awe.
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Thank you! I was so proud of myself; until I discovered that bean. I’ve also discovered seeds in some unusual places, but I’ve never planted Forget-Me-Nots. Now I don’t dare. 😉
In general I’m not particularly bothered by spiders crawling on me, although I usually remove them quite promptly. But if a spider crawled up my shorts? NOPE! You’d see the most energetic Spider Dance ever performed!
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Not vegetables, but certainly critters. In me yoot, it became second nature to doff my shirt and shake it out vigorously before driving home from the corn patch. After many trips into the thick, almost impenetrable forest of giant stalks and gathering armloads of fresh ears, such behavior was mandatory. Otherwise, several of the inevitable caterpillars invariably would announce their presence from within my clothing on the way back. In traffic.
Yeah. THAT visual.
Likewise, de-crittering myself was both necessary and beneficial to my emotional health as well as my auto insurance premium expenditures after every such junket to the garden.
On a similar note, I worked at an ENORMOUS manufacturing facility in my first gig as an engineer. Thousands of employees going and coming at shift change, so traffic in the relatively small town tended to have strong peaks. I was in the line of heavy two-way traffic one morning going to work when one of those big, gray, hairy garden spiders ran off the sun visor in my face, dropped straight into my lap, and disappeared.
I’ll summarize by saying that confusion ensued.
Later that morning, a buddy who lived near me told everyone in the break room about what he’d witnessed on the way to work. “That’s the first time in my life I’ve ever seen a pickup bounce off the curbs on both sides of a crowded street–TWICE!!–without someone needing an ambulance!”
Side note: When I got to work, I LOOKED EVERYWHERE in the cab of that truck. The spider vanished without a trace. Not a clue. Nothing.
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YIKES! It’s the ‘and disappeared’ part of that story that’s the most horrifying! But it coulda been worse. Since you were on your way to work, I’m assuming you weren’t wearing shorts. If that had happened to me while wearing shorts, the morning commuters would have been treated to a similar pinball-wizard driving display, PLUS a bonus striptease. Short on ‘tease’; fast on ‘strip’.
And a caterpillar would get my attention in traffic right smartly, too. Although not as much as the spider. At least I know the caterpillar is unlikely to bite me.
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Exactly. One of those ‘funny once’ things. Unless it happened to someone else. 😁
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Then it’s funny forever! Even more so if there’s video evidence. 😉
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More so if one can display a modicum of plausible deniability. Even better with a short statute of limitations. 😁😁
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I hear more and more Boomers and Gen-Xers commenting about how glad they (I) am that their (our) stupid years ended (at least for the most part) before cell phone cameras and YouTube. One shudders.
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Oooh, yeah. The still photographs were bad enough. Fortunately, we were smart enough to use Polaroids. Single copy, no negatives. 😉
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Bingo. 😜
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How tall is that sunflower???? I planted American Giant and Russian Mammoth, yours must be Extraterrestrial Colossal!
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LOL! You’re close: It’s ‘Giganteus’. Apparently it’s supposed to produce 3/4″ (19mm) long seeds. Hubby is a sunflower-seed-snacker, so he’s hoping for a BIG yield. 🙂
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