Runner Beans

I’ve been so stupid in past years – tried to grow too many things, and when things germinated I planted them squashed together rather than waste them. (It’s the downside of that wartime message engraved on childhood hearts, Waste Not Want Not).  This year, only two crops, parsley and runner beans.  Ah the beans!  I planted them in pots, and the usual thrill as their spears pushed their head through the earth.  Variety: Flavour Star, except it can’t be because I can’t find it in Mr F’s catalogue which is where they came from.

Bill erected a handsome aisle of gold bamboos to accommodate 18 plants.  I restrained myself, I planted only one plant per bamboo and though it hurt, chucked the feeble ones away.  I am revelling in them, I look at them from the window, I go out and examine their stunning heart shaped leaves several times a day.  I go out and help the blind shoots curl anticlockwise round their appropriate canes.  All so neat and tidy, unlike my usual wobbly scaffolding. I revel in the order.

At last, it must be age: Less is More.  Straight lines are beautiful. Wavy lines are fine, but sometimes Nature must be told what to do.