every day is a good day
The White Flower Bean 白花豆 vines started blooming today. This is the first flower to open. Now you see why they’re called White Flower Beans.
And these pole beans which have purple beans, also have bright purple vines. Many vegetables are beautiful while they grow. They are worth growing just for their charm. On the plus side, you get to eat them too.
Carrot flowers look like fireworks. The next time you’re gazing up at a night sky, watching fireworks explode, you can exclaim, “That looks just like a carrot flower!”
Most people when they hear the word “potato” will think of mashed potatoes, french fries, potato salad, and will see images of potatoes in their mind. But flowers? Do images of beautiful, fragrant flowers come to mind?
It’s a cool, cloudy, windy day. Standing next to a large potato field in full bloom with the wind blowing off the field, the wind has a pleasant, sweet carnation-rose fragrance. The wind makes a rustling sound as it shakes the potato leaves and blossoms.
Fort Fairfield in Maine hosts the annual Maine Potato Blossom Festival mid-July each year when the potato blossoms are in full bloom. This 9 day festival features fun for the entire family. This event is one of the oldest and most established festivals in Maine. There is also a Potato Blossom Festival going on right now in O’Leary, Prince Edward Island.
Potato blossoms come in a variety of colors: white, pink, purple, almost blue. Planting a row of potatoes in your garden is worth it just for the blossoms.
Picking baby kale for Tweets Café is always fun. This week there are baby kale, baby chard, baby arugula, and ruby streaks. Stop by at Tweets this weekend and enjoy a salad with produce picked today from a man and his hoe®.
And while you are at Tweets, pop next door to the Edison Eye and check out this art by Mandy. What is it? A Salmobbit? You never know what you’ll see in off the beaten path Edison.
Shopping for produce in grocery stores you miss the beauty of food as it grows. Kale leaves start out as tiny, cute, lacy fronds. Mustard greens produce clusters of green flower buds. Squash blooms splash bright orange color across forests of huge green leaves. And growing apples grow up next to siblings. When they are picked and carted off to stores, do they miss their siblings?
Even if it’s not practical for most people to grow their food, it would be practical to weave gardens and mini farms through urban areas, giving even city dwellers the joy of watching food grow. Then when they bite into their salads, they could close their eyes and picture all the wonderful shapes those salad greens took as they popped out of their seeds, pushed their way through the soil, and spread their leaves like wings.