Brother Bean

I give up! My garden fork gets used almost daily. It’s one of my most dependable, trusted and available garden tools. But now I won’t be able to use it until the pole bean lets it go; it has been captured for the duration of the summer.

The last time I used my trusty old garden fork with its weathered wooden handle was to prepare a small seedbed for some radishes and turnip greens. I had placed it in the ground, stepped on its shoulder and pushed it into the enviably friable soil of our urban backyard garden to lift and turn a section amounting to an area of about four square feet. With each precious forkfull the soil’s structure was revealed to contain years of organic matter and to be home to many earthworms. Two or three minutes later the job was done. With the fork no longer needed for the moment, it was “parked” by jamming it into a nearby vacant spot to await its next calling while I sowed the radish and turnip seeds. That “nearby vacant spot” happened to be about two and one half feet away from a bean pole with a bean plant winding its way upward.

As it happened, that was the day we shoved off to nearby Vermont for a few days of R&R. On return, and barely out of the car, of course I had my usual, “gotta-see-how-the- garden-is-doing” attack. A quick look around revealed the newest weeds and a clump of grass which needed to be turned under. “Where’s that digging fork?”, I thought, as I remembered that I had left it in the ground over by the pole beans.  

One look at the fork firmly planted in the ground revealed a wandering pole bean frond wrapping itself smartly around the handle on its’ way to the sky. Can anyone believe there are pole beans which have a mind of their own?

I think I need to put this scene in perspective. I had set three eight-foot tall bean poles in place at one end of the compost box about eight or ten inches apart. Each pole gets one or two bean seeds planted at its base. The plants sprout and wind around the pole till they reach the top.

Now there was my old trusty digging fork parked a serious stretch away minding its own business when it was apparently spotted by this pole bean frond with a wandering eye. And, since, “Mr. MacGregor” was away tooting around Vermont somewhere, what was to prevent our adventuresome bean from attempting a big leap to grab a pole of its very own so it wouldn’t get stuck in what looked like rough going up ahead?

Well, as I said up front, “I give up!”, so I gave up. Okay, some cowboy bean plant has made its point. Now it’s on its own. It has captured my garden fork and won’t give it back till winter’s chill terminates its Odyssey.

Something inside of me smiled at the hutzpah of this plant, and I decided it could use a bit of help. I could see something the plant could not see: the handle of the fork was much shorter than the neighboring bean poles and the vine would soon run off the top with nothing to hang on to. And since I could not stop its enthusiastic growth, it would soon be flopping around like a distress signal crying for help.

“Well, look”, I thought, since this bean is actually helping me by providing a fourth pole producing great beans, I decided to give it a hand. Quickly I fished out another pole, jammed one end in the ground and secured it to the fork handle after first unwinding the bean’s progress so far. Then I rewound the renegade vine around the combined poles now nicely sistered together.

“Okay, my gregarious friend, I will expect some very special dishes at table soon! And, also, Brother Bean, I would appreciate the safe return of my digging fork.”