A Month in the Country 1 - First Fruits of Lughnasadh

Runner Beans (Heritage variety 'Painted Lady')

Welcome, once again, friends to spending 'A Month in the Country' with me here and around Autumn Cottage.

The quieter, languid days of August are upon us, I have more time to write. The garden has calmed down from its rampant flourishing of earlier months and is now starting to give up of its fruits and abundance. Blackberries are formed and starting to colour up in the hedgerows; garden flowers are producing seed heads, from which I'll be gathering and sowing the seed - and the vegetable garden has started to offer up one of my most favourite seed-pods…those of the runner beans! I would happily sit down to just a plate of these beans for any meal - just a dot of butter on top and happiness is mine. We like them so much that I planted two raised boxes (a metre square) with just beans, they are so favoured here. We also have Chard, Globe and Jerusalem Artichokes, Rhubarb and asparagus in the other beds so far (they are all being renovated this year) but as for me - make mine Beans!                                  

Journal prompt: Beans or Blackberries for you? A staple throughout history, beans of all kinds feature in all sorts of diets, all types of recipes. Do you love them or hate them? What memories of 'beans in my past' do you have? What do you do with yours? Buy them from the shop or grow your own? How do you cook and/or preserve them? Tell me your bean-y (or blackberry) tales!

Blackberries, Greenham Common, today

Comments

[Beth Loft]

A very long but I hope readable post is at Crooked House here https://www.crookedhouse.fr/2019/08/full-of-beans/

I will try my utmost to keep up but, you know, rich and full.... (and very lazy)

xxxx
Beth

[Mad Englishwoman]

We always call runner beans 'rubber' beans as that is what a niece used to call them when she was a child.