Harvest Season

It's my favourite time of year again -- curling up to watch a movie with bowls spread around me...No, not snacks. Shelling beans! I have grown about 16 different kinds of dry beans in the past, but my favourite are Beka Browns, and that's the only kind I planted this year. So prolific, and so delicious! I am always amazed at how rewarding dry beans are. Your rate of return is amazing, and they keep for ages. Each little crisp pod is a present, waiting to be opened to reveal its inner treasures.

Of course, there are also tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, cabbage, cucumbers, beet greens, and green beans in the garden right now. The zucchini and cukes look like they're slowing down, though, and while I was away the green beans set a lot of seed, so they are slowing production now too. This is the best bell pepper season I've ever had. There's nothing more satisfying than giving away bags of tomatoes to neighbours, and the crunch of a homegrown cabbage is soul-satisfying. Keeping a garden is the best instant-happiness-inducing therapy I know of.

It's a dangerous time of year for me, though. I start eyeing the real estate ads and fantasizing about acreage, with vast garden plots and a woodlot and a stream and room for chickens and maybe an alpaca or two... Don't worry, I'll come to my senses again once harvest season is over. Meanwhile, it's stir-fried cabbage for supper and maybe a puff-pastry tomato tart for tomorrow's lunch.

Wow! What happens when you turn your back on your garden for a few days...

Went out to get a few greens for my morning omelette. Came back with this. (Well, one bowl of tomatoes and one container of cherry tomatoes were already waiting for me on the counter. Still...)

There are also a bunch of green beans too big to eat, which will remain in the garden to provide next year's seed.

Just a quick note...

Flew in from Utah tonight after two lovely weeks with family. In case you were wondering where I'd disappeared to. Too late tonight to write further!

A Word of Warning to the Un-Wise

There was a Facebook post this morning that made me cringe. A girl found a tall flower growing in the yard of her fairly-new house, happily assumed it was garlic, and decided to eat the bulb. She posted a picture of herself and her dog with her pungent half-consumed garlic. It's giant allium, not garlic. Technically edible but so strong it can cause vomiting, and it's toxic to dogs. What person would willy-nilly decide to eat something she can't identify? And most of the people commenting on her post were just as clueless, cheering her on and congratulating her on her amazing garlic.

If you don't know what you're doing, folks, don't do it. I mean, yes, everything is edible...at least once. But it's better to educate yourself before risking your health/life. I'm all for foraging, but do some research...

It reminds me of a story a friend told me about her grandmother, who thought the sack of daffodil bulbs was a sack of shallots. She cooked them up and put herself and her husband in the hospital.