A Vertical Garden

If our garden is anything, it's tall. The latest addition to our trellis collection is for our dry beans growing around the flagpole. The lines peak at about twelve feet. By the time we're done our garden will most likely look like a small city with natural (and very edible) skyscrapers.

Click to Enlarge

Meg has a fantastic eye for photography. She pulled this shot off with our little Canon point and shoot (I can't wait to see what she does with a real camera). When I get to see the pics at the end of the day it completely changes how I see the composition of our garden. It really is pretty cool and I am so grateful for it.

By the way, this photo is taken through the bean lines on our new trellis and the object in the background is the flag pole. Oh yeah, we got a new pirate flag (two years of flight shredded the last one). I think it looks like the mast of a ship.

Beans

We signed up (I signed us up) to participate in NaBloPoMo--that's National Blog Posting Month, for those of you who don't speak acronym. That means we have to post on the blog every day for the month of November. Do you know how many days are in November? A lot. Do you know what goes on in a Pennsylvania garden in November? Not much. So today, you're getting a picture of beans.

These are Cherokee Trail of Tears beans (and this is not my picture):

Seed Savers Exchange

The Cherokee tribes in the southeastern US grew these, and managed to take some seeds with them when they were forced out of the southeast to reservations in Oklahoma. Nice, huh? We bought them from the Seed Savers Exchange last summer and planted them a bit too late, but we got a pretty decent harvest anyway. A couple weeks ago I pulled off all the remaining pods so they could dry inside.

We have at least six cups of these, so we're in need of some good, wintery black bean recipes. I think this one sounds pretty good, but we want to spread out our supply on more than one pot of soup.