I was down in the basement, watering the indoor garden and performing a general inspection of which plants are tolerating their work conditions and which are going on strike (flax still has unreasonable requests (I think he’s going to unionize (I should terminate him now))). The pole bean, winding his way up the outside of the structure, also appears to be getting mad, now that he’s reached the top and is realizing that there’s no light up there.
But the bush bean had flowered last week. I viewed this as a bittersweet success, for the flowers were pretty and indicative of adequate growing conditions (I’ll have him pull the flax aside for some coaching), but I knew that it was a wasted effort on his part, for who would pollinate these flowers? In the past, I’ve seen many a bumblebee take on this task, but thankfully I don’t have any bees in my basement. It was still too cold to put the plant outside, so I resigned myself to just enjoying the flowers for what they were–pretty.
But then, this week I noticed something:
Now how did that happen? Asking family, the theories ranged from spiders to self-pollination. If the latter is true, this bean plant is a real go-getter: shows initiative, able to work on his own, proven ability to handle multiple tasks in a fast-paced environment. I think I’m going to promote him to garden foreman.
–Simon