How a Bean Plant Nearly Killed Me

I only remember having a family garden for one summer when I was a kid; we dug up one third of our front yard and planted all sorts of things. Later, I had a very small vegetable garden and then a flower garden, but they were never as magical as that first year.

That was the year that my sister brought home a bean seedling from school. We stuck it in our garden, and it proceeded to take over everything.  The bean was planted on one end and--in just a few weeks--I could sit under the shade of it's massive leaves on the other, and snack on sugar snap peas.

It turned our neat orderly rows into a magical jungle. Or at least, it seemed that way to the very tiny younger version of myself.

I don't know if you know this, but beans have fuzzy leaves. In fact, they would stick like Velcro to a couple of my shirts

I remember one time I was out playing in the garden when  I got up to leave, and discovered that I couldn't.  I had unknowingly brushed my back against one of the giant leaves and it had snagged on my shirt. 

I tried not to panic.

When leaves had stuck to my shirt before, I had  just peeled them off. I tried to reach my back to free myself, except that I could only sort of claw at it.  

I took a running start but was whipped backwards when I reached the end of my leash.

I knew I could shout for help if needed, but I felt determined to get free by myself. None of my siblings would have been trapped by some stupid plant, so I wasn't going to be stuck there either. 

I ran for it again,  the vine snagged at me, but then the leaf snapped off of the vine and I was free. Except that the giant leaf was still stuck to my shirt

Stupid plant.

This is the first year that I have grown beans since then. I touched the fuzzy leaves, and for the first time in a long time remembered the magic of the jungle garden, and the giant bean plant with the leaves that sometimes stuck like Velcro.

It feels like I'm really gardening now.