In the vegetable garden, the blessing of the hot still days is manifold. The rosy ripening globes of the tomatoes, the amber silk on the sweet-corn ears, the gleaming emerald peppers and the royal purple of the eggplant--the color and richness and textures in a vegetable garden are a recurrent miracle. When I walk down the bean rows, I think of Yeats and his "Lake Isle of Innisfree."
"I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade."
Somehow there is a magic in the number nine. However, if he were to live alone in the bee-loud glade, I wonder what he would do with nine bean rows? Maybe they were very short rows? Or maybe the faery folk would gather in the bright of the moon to pick and eat beans? Otherwise, I think Mr. Yeats would have had little time for his golden singing, at least in summer. He would just pick beans!
