Hooray! The beans are up!

We're not talking any old beans here - these are giant beans from the island of Crete. Our family went to Greece in December and January. We finished the trip on Crete. Our favorite time there was in a tiny (about 150 people) town of Agios Stefanos (St. Stephens). We went to Sasteria Observatory, where we had private use of a telescope for 2 1/2 hours one cool night. Our hosts, Filip and Chantel, could not have been more friendly and hospitable. When we got there, it was raining, and we all thought the observatory was done for. We sat for at least an hour, probably more like two, sipping wine and eating olives they had preserved and chatting away. Fortunately, the night cleared up and we saw stars as we had never seen them before. The next day, they took us on a lovely walk around the mountain where they live. Then we got freshly squeezed orange juice (the trees are quite literally everywhere) and gave us a taste of their giant beans. They remind me more of peas, as you split open a huge pod - at least 6-8 inches long - and pluck out the beans. They're great raw! Filip and Chantel gave us some seeds to take home. Of course I had to wait until after the danger of frost to plant them here. Does that tell you how mild the Cretan climate is? That they had beans ripe in January? Anyway, they went in the ground last week, and I noticed they're starting to come up yesterday! We're so excited to taste a part of our trip all over again.

I mentioned our wonderful free garden on the west side of our garage in an earlier post. Here are a few shots of this very short forest, one from each end.



Last but not least, no description of my garden would be complete without a picture of flax. I think it's my single favorite flower. Pretty much it gets to grow wherever it decides to come up, and I can't say that about many flowers!