Earlier in the summer, the kids and I set up some pots in the backyard to create a special garden.  Each child chose their own special plant - Sophie selecting purple petunias, her favorite color, and Martin deciding on a tomato plant, so we wouldn't be hungry.  We also picked up two packets of seeds so that we could watch something grow from scratch, see the tiny plants emerge, and watch it flourish under our constant watering. 

Since I am something of an expert gardener, we used the following planting procedure:
1. Fill pot with dirt.
2. Give children garden hose and let them add water to the pot until it becomes consistency of soup.
3. Tear open packet of seeds and empty into pot.
4. Let kids stick their arms into the dirt and stir until their eyes become crazed with excitement.
5. Spray kids with hose, then wait six weeks for food to appear.

Within a few days of planting we started to see green coming up in the pot of burgundy beans.  A few days later, tiny sprouts started to appear in the pot we'd planted with carrot seeds.  A few weeks later, I thinned out the beans leaving about six or eight plants in the pot, still far more than recommended for the space, but much less than the 50-60 plants that appeared.  I decided not to thin out the carrots at all, instead deciding that we'd just pull them up frequently and look at them to see how they're growing.

One morning last week I looked out the kitchen window and thought "Hmmm, I wonder if I have to stake up those beans so that they don't topple over with the heaviness of all those leaves."  The next day, I looked out of the window again, having done nothing for the beans the day before and found six leaves and a lot of stumpy stems sticking out of the dirt.  The rabbits, not satisfied with all of the flowers they'd gnawed off of my flox, took care of my staking duties by completely stripping all the leaves and stems from the beans.  We went outside to examine the damage and found three lonely and lovely beans.



We picked the beans, washed them carefully and prepared them for a snack.  "These are magic beans," I explained.  "You can tell how much magic is in them by their color after they're cooked.  If they are still purple," I told the kids, "We won't get much magic out of them.  But if they change color, then they're full of magic and will give you good dreams."

We placed the beans in a pot and cooked them on the stove, finding they'd turned green.  We drained them, added butter, salt and pepper.  Each of us took one bean, chewing it slowly.  "These are really magic," Martin said.  "I can tell I'm going to have some really good dreams.  The rabbits are probably having A LOT of crazy dreams, right mom?"