beans

trying out some new varieties of beans this year.  can't wait to see them twining their way up the bamboo trellises and the garden fence.  i've become somewhat bean obsessed of late.  it's a vegetable i feel a definite kinship with (and love to eat).  i've read that the pythagoreans revered the fava bean and believed that the souls of the dead traveled up through the hollow stems and would then reside in the beans.  for me too, there's something sacred in a bean---in the plants and pods and seeds and in the planting and harvesting of them.  it's a hard thing to describe but if you hold them in your hand you can feel it.

'christmas' lima