Here's the thing about green beans...

If you're an amateur gardener like me, do yourself a favor and plant some snap beans. Green beans aren't my favorite vegetable, but Leon suggested we plant them and so we did. Thank goodness! Our garden has been hit or miss this past season—kind Leon insists that even the Burden Center had a tough year—but our beans look good, taste good, and give our gardening egos a much-needed boost.

I just love these plants because while we were fretting over the color of our cucumbers or the weird things that were happening to our tomatoes, a few feet away these plants were thriving behind our backs, despite, or maybe because of, our inattention to them. We let them do their own thing, and they might be our most successful planting of the season. Is there a parenting lesson here? By the way, I'm three months away from being a mother of two children, two years apart, so I am now taking parenting advice from my garden.

Our pretty pole beans have taken over an old trellis that the home's previous owners used for a muscadine vine. For a while we thought the plant wasn't producing, but leave it to Leon to come out and give the plant a thorough frisking, revealing a treasure trove of beans hiding under the thicket of leaves. I swear, we'd all be lost without Leon. Meanwhile, the bush beans planted just a few feet over have also produced very nicely, giving us enough to share with neighbors and family.

The trick with beans is you have to pick them every other day once they're out in full force. I was waiting for robust, about-to-burst beans but just learned from an article by the LSU AgCenter that they should actually be picked "before the developing seeds begin to bulge on the bean." Good to know. As for what happens in the kitchen, we've been happy with a sauté similar to this recipe by Ina Garten.

I'm announcing my next post in advance because otherwise I met let two months go by (again) without giving an update. (It's hard to blog in your spare time when you really should be gardening in your spare time-- am I right, slackers? Be it known that I weed more often than I blog. But just barely.) Check back next week for a report on our canteloupes and watermelons.