Green Bean Botany

It started with a video game, really, and a longing for a simple past. Isn’t that how everything starts now that we’ve become riddled with disease? “Stardew Valley” – a tiny, little, indie game that’s mimetic of my childhood: holding my blue Gameboy Advance, cartridge sticking out of the bottom, directing my digital farmer around town with a tiny arrow pad; perfectly child-sized. “Harvest Moon,” a game with cows, and cats, and chickens. Nothing stressful, just farming. As a child I adored the idea of calm, it was something absent in my household.

But I got into this video game, “Stardew Valley,” before the first lock-down, it brought me back to the moments of happiness. It reminded me of my older goals, my past life. I could make my past life my present. If I play the game reminiscent of what I know, there can be nothing unpredictable, nothing stressful. A digital coping method full of free-range farming, there was nothing not to love.

And then Food Basics sold Green Bean seeds, and my digital farmer could manifest into a physical reality. I started a collection;

- Bok choy

- Dill

- Onions

- Leeks

- Strawberries

- Cucumbers;

- And, of course, the Green Beans

They gave me a very strange sense of joy, even when they only grew to die. I woke up every morning with a feeling to succeed, it matched my green beans.

So I created a past-time. Gardening, vegetables, two green beans every few weeks, twenty-five cents saved at the store, and a whirlwind of dreams come true.

Every dead plant was digitally erased by my farmer's successful crops, until, eventually, my digital farm wasn’t needed to replace my physical one. My Bok Choy sprouted, I named her my Queen, I named myself a garden.bby. She died, I grieved, I documented her loss online. Her success moving from reality to digital, she created a community.

I meet my neighbours; I sent many thanks for their kindness. House #42, thank you for your bountiful pots that bear my spinach, nourish the habanero. Thank you to the woman with her Memorial Hydrangea, who gave me soil to fill each one. To reach through your mourning, to embrace me into a community.

I told my followers one day, “Thank you, Mother Earth, for providing, for prevailing, and for forgiving;” The day I told myself the same thing was the day my first Golden Wax bean sprouted. 23 died in the process, but she made it.

I can’t say that gardening has provided me with endless happiness. Many days I see the dulling leaves, or the overwatered soil and I think of only my failures. Other times, I remember the simpler days, the blue Gameboy, the digital farm, the end of each season – a chance for renew.

I never bought plant trimmers, but every person I know receives a propagated plant. Watching the seeds sprout is mesmerizing, but capturing the roots as they grow, soaking in the water, breathing in the light

Photosynthesis in motion.

I cut the growth, near a few “eyes.” That’s what they’re called on potatoes. The eye of the potato, where your roots will grow. Poetic, when you consider the aesthetics. It takes a close look, my toes reach their tips as I stand on a small, plastic stool. I hold the healthiest growths, the ones that grow quick, grow crowded. I like to think I’m helping them feel safe, feel that they have space. I move up the stem, I try hard not to ruin any leaves, and then I lift my scissors and cut. The little black eyes, they look at me and ask “why,” I know the answer is to give them life.