Have you been eating your beans? Drinking your bean teas? Smelling your bean flowers and roots and seeds?
The lupins are blooming.
I was recently camping in eastern Oregon’s Ochoco mountains. I couldn’t kick a plant filled fossil rock without hitting native lupin, milk vetch, or mountain clover (or invasive medicago or gorse).
When we came home, Portland is full of Wisteria, showy and subtle clovers, the red buds we have are going wild, and the cultivated lupins and sweet peas are about to explode. My greenhouse is bursting with sugar peas and the ones planted outside are going strong. Filet green beans are pushing their first true leaves.
I had more ambitions for this year than I will be able to get to.
The Sweet Bean Box is for sale, and I still intend to launch a savory version with roasted peas, fava, chickpeas, and so on. Maybe those lentil crackers everyone likes?
I had hoped to do an expanded pea box with grey peas and the mildly poisonous grass peas. Along with the less closely related Pigeon Peas, the whole version used in Caribbean cuisine instead of the toor dal splits of Indian food I sent last year.
I wanted to do more with bean trees, more carob, more mesquite, some honey locust product if I could get it.
But that will have to wait. I have some more things in the works. And the sweet bean box.
Conveniently for you, there are bean family plants everywhere. I’ll try to make it a point to point them out more often.
Beanly yours,
Brian
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