OK, I could be addicted to picking beans, cos I just love picking them off the plants after having helped to teach the plants which way to climb and then tending them and watering them while they got big enough to start to give their wonderful harvest.   I also love eating them whether fresh or dried, so maybe I’m just addicted to beans, lol. Or maybe just an avid gardener and person who believes it’s important to grow and preserve some of your own food if you can.  Anyway, whatever it is, it’s a very rewarding feeling and you get to eat the results.

The ones that are getting dried go in glass containers on one of my sunniest window sashes to cure for a couple weeks before I pack them away.  You need to make sure there’s not one bit of moisture in any of the beans before you close the containers, or mold will happen quickly and you’ve lost the whole batch.

King of the Garden Limas are just getting ready to start to produce, and they will produce a lot.  We’ll eat some fresh and dry some for eating in the winter and for seed.

Hopi orange Lima beans are starting to get done, and I’ve been picking them just as the pods start to dry cos I noticed that they’ll crack as soon as the pod gets a little brown, and we don’t want to lose any of these beautiful and interesting beans.  They will make a wonderful  winter treat dried and then used in soup with some frozen tomatoes from our garden, or cooked plain with some butter. I’m fascinated with these cos they’re so different than anything I’ve grown before.

I’ve been  busy gardening and writing about it, among other fun summer stuff, but I should at least mention my assistant, MaChatte, since she’s sort of  part of this bean drying process. The beans and chili peppers that are drying and curing have to go on the window sashes, not on the sills, because window sills are part of the areas of the house that she counts as her own places, needing to get up on them to see the squirrels and rabbits outside. Drying things on the sashes that she can’t reach guarantees me that I won’t wake up and find beans and broken glass all over the kitchen. My assistant, in this case, assists me by letting me have my own space to use, where she can’t reach, lol. Good girl, Chattie.

She still knows how to spend a hot late summer day.