Garden Folly Redux

Yes, I know.  This all started going sideways from day one.  First it was the dogs that required fencing that turned the garden into Fortress America.  Then it was zucchini plants from Mars that grew to Brobignagnian size and started churning out zucchini on a production-line scale so I ended up with zucchini for breakfast, zucchini for lunch and dinner.  And ended up chasing my neighbors down with sacks of the stuff while they ran away, their hands over their heads, yelling, “I’M NOT HOME!”

And, all right.  The pumpkins.  That started out as a joke.  I had saved the seeds from last year's soup pumpkin and I thought, "Oh, there's no way these things are going to grow." But they did and broke out of the dog barrier and headed for the fence, trailing pumpkins behind them. It was right out of "Invasion of the Pod People." 

Next came the green beans.  Who knew they would grow so tall?  And since the support netting was only pea-pod high, they started mungling back on themselves into a tangled mess.




But that didn’t stop them. Nosir!  They were worse than the zucchini.  Beans, beans, more beans.  24/7 nothing but beans. Fortunately, I love green beans.  So do my friends and neighbors, but the plants were getting to be a serious mess and so tangled it was hard to find the beans before they'd turned themselves into little more than lumpty bean-filled pods. 
 
O.K., I confess.  Looking back, I should have sought out therapy, some nice Garden Counselor who could have talked me down.  But, no.  I was too far gone by this time, my green bean ambitions totally out of control.  Plus, it wasn't my fault.  The Universe was conspiring against me because when I was out walking the dogs, I just happened to stop and chat with a neighbor – about gardening, naturally – and he just happened to mention that he’d given up on growing green beans – something about not enough sun in his garden plot – and he asked me if, perhaps, I’d like his very tall bean-pole poles.

Well, what could I say?



So I carted them home, put in eye-screws , cable-tied them together into a bean teepee and planted them in  another raised bed and popped a few more bean seeds in the ground.













And today I'm planning on pulling out the old bean tangle. I think maybe a nice row of green peas might work there.  Mmmmm, peas.   






Meantime, does anybody happen to have Jack’s phone number?  I need to call him to get the Giant’s recipe for green bean soup. I think I'm gonna need it.