First (and probably last) Green Beans

This year I started my garden from seeds, planted in tiny newspaper pots (which I made myself). All the little seedlings lived on the dining room table, which gets the best light, from mid-March to mid-May. This was my first attempt at starting from seeds. I did something wrong, though. A lot of my seedlings died during the transplanting process, so I started new seeds outside in the containers. My green beans were my pride and joy, though, as they didn't die and it looked like we were going to get TONS of green beans. I had looked into canning vs. freezing and everything. I had been watching them to see when I should pick them, and I had decided that yesterday was the day. When I went outside though, I saw a tragedy. In about a 24 period some creature ate holes through almost all of the leaves. It ate a lot of the green beans and ate holes in the green beans that it didn't eat. These are the the sad, remaining green beans (which we ate anyway--and they were good). I looked for the creature, but it appears to have eating my green beans and moved on. I also looked for something on all my other plants, and thus far, everything looks okay. It was a sad day for green beans, though. This is why you shouldn't count your green beans before they are ripe--I think that I cursed them with looking into the canning/freezing options.


Moving on from the green beans.... I have been making these little bags for my best friend's 4 children. Three out of the four have their birthday's in August, so this year I decided that everyone gets their present at the same time. They are getting ready for vacation, so I'm making each child a little themed bag and am filling it up with art supplies and treats for the trip. (I used some of Abby's creatures for photography proposes.) They are driving to France.* (They live in Wales, so driving to France is an option and actually they are taking a ferry boat across the English Channel.) The trip should take them 13 hours, so new toys are always appreciated. I'm thinking about offering these little bags as a custom item in my Etsy store. I'll take pictures of all four of the bags together once I finish the last one.


*I love saying "my best friend is driving to France. I've been working it into as many conversations as possible.