I was going to write about our incredible garlic harvest, but the beans are stressing me out. They tend to overwhelm. Just when I had things under control —  peas, broccoli and lettuce —  the beans start to appear.  If you’ve ever waited tables, you’ll get this analogy: I’m in the weeds. The beans are throwing off my gardening rhythm. They come on so strong and need constant attention. Like a bad kid, you always got to keep your eye on them or they get all big and out of control. One day we have cute little yellow and green string beans barely a half-inch long. Then next day I’m harvesting a handful of beans, then a few pounds of beans, then I’m harvesting five pounds of beans, then eight pounds. And successive plantings ensure that once they start coming, they keep coming, and coming, and coming . . .

I was so focused on “getting to the beans” that I wasn’t paying attention while working in the neighboring raspberry patch and had an unpleasant run-in with a four-foot long pine snake. I levitated right over the raspberry patch and the three-foot bean hedge. (Unfortunately I will not be able to go back into the raspberry patch for the rest of the season, which is really too bad because we are having a great raspberry year.)

We will eat beans everyday until they finally wind down. Forget about the broccoli and peas, those I’ll freeze. But green beans taste best fresh with a little bit of sea salt and nutritional yeast. I don’t freeze my beans, frozen beans suck. No, I don’t do dilly beans, but you are welcome to my beans if you want to go for it. Beans will be our side dish at every meal. Beans with corn, beans with tomatoes, beans with venison, beans with beans. If you have a good green bean recipe, send it my way.

We’ll sell them a the farmer’s market. Mix them together — green and yellow Packer beans sell well in these parts. I’ve done a blind taste test between the yellow and green beans and can’t say I notice a difference, though some of my farmer’s market customers swear they can.

When the beans finally wind down and start to get moldy, I will yank out the plants with much satisfaction and toss them into the compost along with the gnarly, extra-large beans that got overlooked. I’ll finally be able to focus on other parts of the garden that got ignored because the beans demanded so much of my attention. By then it will be time to start playing hide and seek with the squash plants.