Planting Potatoes And Sharing Beans

This morning my great uncle called.  Years ago he had passed along a bag of long beans that he had grown.  He originally got the seeds from my great-grandfather, and has been growing them ever since.  He was calling because his basement was repainted last fall, and in the muddle of re-painting, his collection of bean seeds was lost.  He was glad, and I am glad, that he passed them along, because I can share them back.

I planted my potatoes this week.  Last year they did not do well at all.  The ground needed to be tilled, but only Ethan can work the tiller, and he was not willing.  This year the pigs and chickens have tilled it for us, and the soil looks darker and richer than ever in the place I am planting.






These grubs just emerged from my onion patch one day.  They had the most interesting way of scooting on their backs to move around.  I wasn't sure what they were, but I moved them out of the garden in case they ate roots.  Ethan looked it up, and, as we suspected, they were cicada grubs.  That same evening, a huge bug that I never got a good look at (but it sounded like a cicada) kept flying at me when I was in the garden.  We joked it was the mother cicada, mad that I had moved her children.