Green beans

It seems like I've been waiting a long time for this:

I finally got to pick some green beans last Saturday. These came off of the bush beans. Since then I've picked more from them and even a few from the pole beans.

My green bean situation has led me to do some thinking. I don't know if it was the late start or something else, but the pole beans haven't done much. They're about two feet tall. The bush beans look like this:

And the pole beans look like this:

Yes, I know you can't tell the difference. That's the point. The pole beans haven't grown very tall at all. I think my crazy tower is partly to blame. They did not seem to grasp onto the strings the way I imagined. I tried to help, but even then, they preferred to reach out and stick to each other. What little 'viney' growth they've had has been on the fence or other plants.

Before I planted this year, I thought about doing away with pole beans altogether and planting only bush beans. My dad plants bush beans and always seems to have more beans much earlier than me. This year's results seem to support that idea. Not sure what I'll do with the bean goal post, but I'll figure out some way to use it.

The good news is, by this evening I had enough beans to do something, so I dug up some more potatoes (two pounds 10 ounces from one plant), and made green beans and potatoes with pesto. The original recipe came out of a vegetarian Italian cookbook I have and also includes pasta. I skipped the pasta. The beans, potatoes and basil all came from my garden. It was delicious.

In other garden news, the marigolds are stunning.

I've pulled a bunch of seed heads, with the hope of not having to buy seeds next year.

The butterflies are enjoying my zinnias. The day I took this guy's picture, there was also a monarch flying around, but he didn't sit still long enough.

Today's birds: goldfinch, mourning dove, blue jay, sparrow. I should've posted last night. I finally saw a wren in my back yard yesterday!