I may have had a contest reminder ready for today, or a post on the wonderful world of adjectives, but those thoughts were beautifully blown from my mind when I took a writing break yesterday to pick climbing beans in our garden.
The poor garden has been woefully neglected in the last several weeks, and since these particular beans are meant to be eaten young and small (though you can wait for the pod to shrivel and cook the inner seeds as you would any dried bean), I was disappointed to find many too-large pods swinging in the breeze.
But when I ripped open one of the offensive giants, I found...
WONKA BEANS!!!
The inner seeds were gorgeous and totally worthy of being filled with chocolate and stuck inside Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory to grow into some sort of bizarre and magnificent tree.
I suppose my takeaway from yesterday is that you can be having a slogging, regular kind of day~ the kind of day where the thought of making dinner and folding laundry is already wearing on you, but then! But then you find MAGIC WONKA BEANS and you are over the moon. Giddy with delight. Giggling like a schoolgirl and excited by the amazing surprises the world holds.
Finding that wonder in everyday things can make you realize that your inner kid is still very much alive and that magic beans might just exist.
Although the beans have already lost a bit of their lively color from drying on the counter, yesterday was an extremely cool day, and I thought I'd share the coolness.
PS~ These are scarlet runner beans, in case any of you want to grow some next year. In addition to the awesome beans/seeds, they produce a red flower that's edible!! OK, stepping off my backyard vegetable soapbox.
Lovely, lovely post. And, yes you can find gems in your manuscript after you have neglected it for a while. :)
ReplyDeleteCool beans. Love the way the color matches her dress. I'd love to find some wonka beans in my manuscript right about now.
ReplyDeleteHa! Me, too. Although, that might kind of be confusing with the "historic mystery" vibe I'm going for :)
DeleteThat truly is cool. Thanks for sharing. And tell Mini-Me I love her dress!
ReplyDeleteWow! You are fancy. But what kind of beans are those really. They're so...My Little Pony colored.
ReplyDeleteThey're Scarlet Runner beans. You can eat the red flowers they produce!
DeleteI love beans, and am so jealous that you grow your own in your backyard. So pretty, too! Enjoy them!
ReplyDeleteI will! If you and the hubs come down, you can have some :)
DeleteThose are flipping huge beans! lol
ReplyDeleteI think we all need to be reminded that there are special things hidden in the ordinary. And we all struggle with that in our writing at times, especially when we make the effort to write in a routine. Because, well, it becomes routine! If the act of writing is ordinary, I think it leads us to sometimes believe our writing to be ordinary as well. Which isn't the case, or at least not always in my case. :-D
Great thoughts, EJ!
DeleteOkay, you've sold me-next year! Great post!
ReplyDeleteOh, good! They've been a lot of fun :)
DeleteI loved this post! Those beans brought back magical memories of past gardening years!
ReplyDeleteThanks :) Isn't gardening the best? Such a fun thing to do with kids, too.
DeleteAll of our peas died. I blame the tomatoes.
ReplyDeleteAll of our tomatoes died. I blame my lack of watering.
DeleteOh how fun!!! My kids would have adored that:)
ReplyDeleteThanks, Lindsay~ I'm not sure who was more excited~ my daughter or me :)
DeleteHoly wonka beans indeed! You going to try and eat them or plant them? You story sitting--especially if you're kind of thinking about it while you do other things--can bear fruiful results.
ReplyDeleteWe're going to try eating them :)
DeleteThis is awesome. And I LOVED your embarrassing moment post...keep on being not normal, please!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I shall do my utmost to remain as not-normal as I was that day :)
DeleteThose sound wonderful - if only for sharing with kids and not eating! Any nutritional value is just a bonus.
ReplyDeleteAnd I loved how you tried to make the beans into a metaphor - very successfully, I might add!
I love discovering something unexpectedly beautiful or bizarre in the midst of the ordinary. Sometimes I think I'm experiencing a second childhood, I love it! (the way our kids see the world helps, too)
ReplyDeleteI discover magic beans in my writing when I get stuck on something that isn't working. First I have a pity party. Then I give my MS the silent treatment. Then I start brainstorming solutions and then that's when the fun -- the magical part - begins as ideas start percolating.