Go-go green beans!

Last weekend, three of us came home just as the finishing touches on dinner were being done and found four plates on the table, each heaped with large servings of green beans and a potato or two. I didn’t think much about it but ate happily. After finishing about half of my green beans, it occurred to me that they were the best green beans I ever tasted (and I really like green beans). At the same time my mom asked where the green beans were from, perhaps the farmers’ market?

No, the reply. The backyard.

At which I jumped. These green beans were from the backyard? There’s actually something this good growing back there? WHOA! And Yay! Alas, my dad then said that those were the only green beans on the plants, so we’ll have to wait ’til next weekend for more.

I’m not entirely sure he was prepared for how much more.

I don’t often go into the backyard, but when Dad said yesterday that there were a lot more green beans this weekend, I decided that that was what I wanted for dinner tonight (with tomatoes, though not home-grown ones: our tomato plant is doing really badly and all tomatoes have for a few years now. Dad suspects a fungus in the soil). So I went out to pick them. I picked almost enough for dinner, then realized I had only visited a quarter of the green bean plants in the row there. I hurried through to the end, trying to get the biggest, most ready-to-be-consumed green beans off of the plants so they had space to produce more. Then I came in and told everyone that we’d be eating green beans for a week, a large smile on my face.

The green bean plants look the best in the backyard, too. Out of all the basil and lettuce and spinach and broccoli, they’re the ones that are flourishing and growing. Wonder why. I’m not a gardener, but it was definitely really satisfying to go outside and get dinner right off the plant. And I’m going to be doing a lot of that this week. Daily, I think. Don’t plants produce better if they are harvested more often (than once a week)?

My favorite tomatoes are those fresh off the vine (and tomatoes are my favorite foods), which is why it pains me that our tomato plants are so sad looking. There are a few green ones right now, but they never quite seem to ripen. Or maybe they just wait to ripen until after I leave.

Why am I talking about this? Because it seems like a good thing to talk about. Plus, I like food. And I like food from the backyard. And even more importantly I like feeling like we’re taking care of at least a little bit of our food supply. We won’t be canning or preserving these beans, but we will be enjoying them a lot in the next week.

In another direction entirely, Sara and I went on a yarn crawl. Why we hadn’t done this sooner, I don’t know. You know how there are some stores you hear about ever since you’ve begun knitting? For me, that’s Imagiknit. I always thought I should go there someday, but was a little afraid of navigating SF on my own. Now I just want to know why I waited until I have a week left in California. It’s not even an hour away! It’s the biggest yarn store I’ve ever been in and it has sooo much yarn. A little of everything: affordable yarns, staple yarns, luxury yarns. Why, why, WHY hadn’t I gone in sooner???

I came home with this:

I almost got this in a color very similar to that of The Nantucket Jacket. Thankfully Sara was there to remind me. My color palette for sweaters is really stuck right now between blue and red. Hopefully this purple will take care of that. Also, it’s Berroco Ultra Alpaca and a sweater’s worth was around $75. Which is about how much the yarn for the Nantucket Jacket cost, and that’s just superwash wool. I think it’s a good amount and I’m soooo excited about it! I wonder what I’ll make? I have so many choices…

(The other two yarn stores we went to really weren’t worth talking about in comparison with ImagiKnit! Possibly unbelievable, but there you go.)