HARALD and the BEANSTOCK!

    
              HARALD and the BEANSTALK!

                  These beans were just getting started!

    We have all heard the fairy tale about "Jack and the Beanstalk!" But this is a different beanstalk story and definitely not a fairy tale! Once upon a time, Harald developed a friendship with a couple who were displaying and selling their wares at a craft show. As Harald was displaying professional photographs and they had booths next to each other, it was inevitable that they became friendly. It turned out they were avid gardeners as well as entrepreneurs, so information was traded on many things, especially gardening! 

    Harald's friends had originally lived in Jacksonville, Florida and had a store there. As is often the case with stores in big cities, they are victimized by criminals who have nothing better to do than vandalize, steal and in general make a total nuisance of themselves. With government's tendency to cater to such primitives these days, this kind of individual became a constant nuisance. So Harald's friends decided to sell and move to a part of the country where people looked and acted more like them, had more things in common and not hostile to each other. They settled in a rural area of Montana. 

    Harald's friends loved to garden, and pretty soon everyone was sharing methods, experiences and preferences as to how to grow, can and prepare all garden goodies! In the process Harald learned about an exciting new bean variety. It had no name really, but may have gone by numerous names over time. It may even have originated in Portugal, something confirmed by a Portuguese friend of Harald's. Well, the bean was supposed to grow to a huge height, develop pods that were a foot long, one inch wide and almost a quarter inch thick! To top it off they were supposed to be the sweetest and most tender; the most amazing pole bean ever! They gave Harald some seeds and he was excited to try them out!

     He planted them! 

     They Grew!

     And they kept Growing!

     And Growing!

    After a while they grew all the way to the top of the greenhouse! Since this was a short season climate, Harald grew them in there! There were absolutely NO beans on them! Even worse was the few flowers that appeared, all fell off! Harald was disappointed and disgusted that the beans did not mature. But, they had been planted late and so he planted them again the following year!
     That year the beans grew again to eight feet and crowded the top of the greenhouse!  But these things still kept growing and when they could grow no higher, they simply grew back down half way to the ground and kept growing some more! There were absolutely NO beans on them, either! Even worse was the few flowers that appeared, all fell off again! Disappointed for the second year, Harald stopped watching them regularly to see how they produced. He simply ignored them! He had so many other duties to attend to that Harald needed to focus elsewhere!

     One day when Harald had finished other work, he decided to part the leaves on his new beans which had now grown into a solid wall and was absolutely stupefied to find dozens of beans hidden there! They were huge and getting larger! He inspected more of the row and....HEAVENS!...the vines were loaded! In short he had never seen so many beans in his whole life! Harald started picking and cooking them for dinner. Yes, they were the most tender and sweet beans he had ever eaten. Every time he picked, it was a two gallon bucket full! He canned a whole bunch, salted some, saved some seeds for the following year and finally wondered what he was going to do with the ones he had left over! 

     It is amazing how nature works. Here Harald had wished for sweet beans.... He had wished for tender beans.....  He had wished for a big crop of beans....  He was impatient when they did not develop....   And then when least expected, the vines went into full production and Harald was in pole bean heaven! One thing he had forgotten was simply to let beans grow and develop in their own way, which is the nature of all growing things. Getting impatient is not the way it works!

     The lesson here is a simple one: when you SOW GREAT THINGS, be careful and patient of what you sow! You may REAP FAR MORE than you sowed!

    Written, photographed
           and posted by

Harald Hesstvedt Scharnhorst

      September 2015