Crabby Lima Beans

There is a lot of rain up here, even though everyone keeps telling us that this is the driest winter they can remember.  As everything I own (including all pets and children) seems damp and muddy 100% of the time, I am so looking forward to the wet winters.  But it was sunny and gorgeous today, and everything that is not sealed over in a layer of moss (which furrily covers most stuff in Oregon) seems to be doing its best to reach for the sky with new limbs of baby green.  Except in my house.

I do not have a green thumb.  I have killed every plant that has ever been entrusted to my care.  That’s the problem – the care part.  Only a plant that can thrive on a diet of total disregard and neglect has any chance with me.  Once a plant needs things from me, I either completely forget or totally overdo it and kill the plant with over-attention.

Including both girls’ kindergarten lima bean projects, in which they were to tend lima beans from seeds to sprouts into cute little lima bean plants.  Maj’s lima beans never got past the sprouting stage, but instead turned to a horrible black foul-smelling mess.  She dutifully recounted the transformation in her “Cycle of Life” science journal, but Maj was very unhappy when she saw the other children’s lushly green success stories.

I still have Maj’s kindergarten Science Project.  It’s one of my very favorite things Maj has ever done for school.  You’ll have to take my word for the anguish that is evident in her careful pencil handwriting:

Lima Bean Science Project That Did Not Work – By Maj

Day 1 – I soaked a bunch of hard lima beans in a bowl of water

Day 2 — I peeled the shells off of the lima beans.  This was hard!  Most of the little plants broke.  Twelve did not.  I put those 12 in a vase with cotton and water.

Day 3 – I made sure the lima beans were wet and got sun.

Day 4 – They look the same.

Day 5 – I can see the tiny sprouts getting bigger!  A teeny bit.

Day 6 – One of the beans got black and stinky.  Mom took it out and it was all smooshy.

Day 7 – The sprouts are bigger, but another one got stinky and black.  Only 10 left.

Day 8 – The sprouts are growing down.  Mom says those are the roots.

Day 9 – I can see tiny leaves on one of the lima beans!

Day 10 – A few of the beans have tiny leaves!  And also roots.

Day 11 – The vase is pretty stinky.  Mom moved it out of the kitchen into the sunroom.

Day 12 – Still smelly.

Day 13 – Two of the plants have turned black and are dead.  Mom says maybe they got stuck in the cotton.  We tried to loosen another one, and it broke apart.

Day 14 – Seven beans are still growing, and it smells bad to check on the others.

Day 15 – They don’t seem to be getting any bigger.

Day 16 — Mom moved the vase outside and says my teacher probably won’t want to smell it either.

Day 17 – We tried to loosen the cotton from the 7 left.

Day 18 – The lima beans do not look happy with things.

Day 19 – Still crabby.

Day 20 – Five more turned to black mush.  Two are trying to grow, but do not look right.

Day 21 – No change.

Day 22 – No change.

Day 23 – Only 1 lima bean still has any green left to it.  The rest are dead and stinky.

Day 24 – One lima bean plant left has teeny leaves that have to unfold.

Day 25 – Leaves did not unfold.

Day 26 – It looks like this one is dying too.

Day 27 – I think the last one is dead too.  Mom says my teacher said it was OK if our science project did not work.  I hope my Mom is not lying, because Neha has a flower growing and Elizabeth has vegetables and I have only stinky yuck.

Day 28 – Mom dumped the vase and washed it out.  She saved a few of the dead plants for me to bring to class.  Mom says people will have to use their imaginations.

Day 29 – I put a few dead beans in a container with a lid.  If you look closely, you can see tiny white worms eating the beans!

Day 30 – I should have planted a flower like Neha.

THE END. Maj

Too much water, we were told by the other parents at the science fair as they covered their giggles with coughs.  So when it came Kallan’s turn to sprout her lima beans (I tried and failed to convince her to try another kind of plant), we kept a careful eye on the water.  They sprouted!  They grew!  And then they withered and died.

Not enough water?  Perhaps.

Another sad “Cycle of Life” journal.  At the school science fair, Kallan’s journal lay buried beneath the leafy green successes of her classmates.  Kallan seemed as clear as her sister before her that this was all Mom’s fault.

Over the years, the girls have watched as I have killed every houseplant that has entered our house.  Watched as I tried to grow a vegetable garden, but instead only grew tomatoes (which, it turns out, are pretty hard to screw up).  Watched as every flowering plant that required anything more than to just be set free in our back yard withered and died.  Zinnias.  Snapdragons.  Daisies.  Marigolds.   All so pretty on the packages.  Dead.  Dead.  Dead.  Dead.

So we skipped the seed stage and started buying living plants from the local nursery already started in pots.  Fruits, vegetables, flowers.  They’d do better, right?  Dead.  Dead.  Dead.

All by way of explaining the tone of absolute wonder and joy and ecstacy in Maj’s voice as she came running into the house this morning, shouting for the entire family to come look.  “We have FLOWERS in our front yard and they are not dead!!!”  We all went running to look, and as we all bent to glory in the small purple buds that have mysteriously appeared overnight in our mossy front yard, Kallan spoke with the wisdom of long experience, “This is how you know Mom hasn’t lived here very long.”