Jewels from the Garden - beans and corn drying for the year

 Esme helping sort the corn and break out dry pods of beans onto a plate.  She was so bouncey, and wiggly, and overexcited - she wanted to wash everything and dance and jump and splash water everywhere... finally calmed down some.  I told her a joke because she was scowling at me - and said I had tricked her into looking happy... well.. after that she continued to smile, because she actually was having a little bit of fun.

 Breaking out the whipporwill cowpea pods - which are very long, narrow and crispy. 

A lot of the corn seen here was 'volunteer.'  It came up without my knowing what was there or how... we had ornamental corn there last year but grew all of our other corn elsewhere in the garden this year.  I planted a few seeds of Smoke Signals and Peaches and Cream corn in between each of the volunteers to make a full row that we would not step on - as they were naturally scattered a bit here and there and not quite in a straight line.

Upon examining the outcome - I think it was a cob of Hopi Pink and one of Glass Gems that got mixed in, or some cache of seeds some animal had buried from last year we hit with the tiller.    I have them drying out to shell into containers and label for the year.  The pictures don't do any justice to the blues and greens that are present in real life.. .a whole range of color - which is where I say they are our jewels from the garden.

 

And this is the bean crop so far.

The large buff colored beans are Ireland Creek Annie - which did very well.  I started with nine of those seeds and have 30+ and have more to break out in the coming weeks.  The Black Shackamaxon has a showing already and there are gallons of that coming later.  The red and white speckled ones are Taylor Dwarf Horticultural - something I didn't have room for last year.  

The Ireland Creek Annie and the Taylor are both my first 'major' expeditions into full rows of "reserved to dry" bush beans - as most of my harvests have come from pole beans up until now.  There are also some tiny white climber beans, whipporwill cowpeas and black eyed peas.  I planted some unlabelled Pinto beans (which I thought the white climbers were when I gathered them...odd...always have some odd ones out, right?)   Kenearly Yellow Eye (a semi-climber that says it is a bush), black seeded wax (one of those seeds is one, but I've lost it in the mix!), Bosnian and Provider seeds all drying out in the cabinet.

I've also got a decent collection of Mammoth Striped and Lemon Sunflower seeds this year... partly for the chickens, partly for next year.