A Bean Grows in Roy Lab
I am not normally prone to indulge in conspiracy theories, but I cannot keep myself from whipping up a nice one to explain the eerie power of The Grandma Bean. Like some force of nature whose schemes play out on a time scale too great for our feeble minds to grasp, I imagine The Bean patiently waiting as endless centuries pass, biding its time until it assumes its rightful place as the all powerful, all knowing legume king…
…eons creep by and each spring The Bean dutifully sprouts in the warming soil, climbs up trees, crawls over bushes, and eventually, when some lowly human discovers its pods are good eatin’, it obligingly spirals up an A-frame of bean poles…
…all the while, The Bean is satisfied with this low-profile existence, happy just to be taking up a small patch of ground in some scenic corner of the Mediterranean coast. Its contentment drawn from an unwavering certainty that some day, it will grow on every continent of the globe, planted in elegantly painted pots and nourished by the richest soil. Pilgrims will bring spring water from their distant lands and surrounding plant life will be kept in constant check so that The Bean is never shaded from sun’s rays.
Or not.
Maybe The Bean actually is just your average green bean, best when picked early, steamed lightly and served with lemon, garlic and olive oil. But really, it does seem a little spooky the way The Bean has spread over the course of only a couple of Bianchi-Campodonico generations. Hear me out on this one.
As its name implies, The Grandma Bean’s most recent genealogy traces back to my mom’s grandmother, who grew them in her well-tended garden in Roseville, California. To add to the romance and intrigue of The Bean, I like to think that Roseville Grandma carried a pocket full of bean seeds all the way across the Atlantic when she emigrated from Italy early last century. I have no proof that this is the case - she probably just dried out some beans she bought at the market in Roseville and planted them the next spring. But hey, conspiracy theories are all about drama, and what’s more dramatic than being a stowaway on a trans-Atlantic voyage?
( Conspiracy theory update, 22 June 2005. Recent intelligence gathering efforts have confirmed that The Bean did actually travel across the pond from Roseville Grandma's home town of San Ginese di Compito in Tuscany. A crafty bean indeed. Thanks for the info, Ma.)
In the decades following The Bean's happy years in the hot Roseville sun, it has spread quietly to Walnut Creek, momentarily back East to West Virginia when Mom and Dad did their ‘60’s thing, then back to Berkeley when three kids in a barn didn’t seem like that much fun afterall. In Piedmont, The Bean thrived and sensing that its moment of world domination was almost at hand, The Bean engineered its transport to many gardens throughout the Bay Area, including that of Mom’s manicurist Lu.
And finally, last summer, The Bean traveled east again where it took up residence in the posh, climate controlled, irrigated beds of the Yale Forestry School green house. Having re-crossed the continent, it appeared that The Bean's long-destined spread had now begun.
But alas! With the graduation of Michael, a.k.a. the guy with keys to the green house, The Bean had nowhere to grow this year. The sandy patch of lawn in front of my apartment is hardly fit for the grass that struggles to grow there and the handful of seeds I collected last year sat gathering dust in a weighing dish on my desk.
Here’s where The Bean’s crafty ways become more apparent. Earlier this spring, unaware of my role in The Grand Scheme, I wandered about my lab handing out bean seeds to people, explaining that in my family, these bean seeds were used in a game known simply as "Beaning." The single object of this game is to place these beans in the pockets, wallets, suitcases, etc... of the unsuspecting and wait for them to be discovered. In addition, vigilance to prevent oneself from being beaned is also key. That's it.
“Go forth and bean,” said I.
Days later, one such beaned individual name Bithi removed the bean from her pocket and placed it on the windowsill in her bathroom. Soon after that, some workmen doing repairs in her bathroom placed the bean on the soil of a potted plant nearby to clear their work area. Nature took its course and within a matter of days, Bithi came running to me in lab, anxiously clutching a yogurt cup full of dirt that now held the germinated bean seed.
“What do I DO?! I can’t grow anything! The plant in the pot where this thing sprouted died as soon as I brought it home! HELP!”
Bithi wanted me to take the bean away from her. She couldn’t bare killing it, she said, not after it had sprouted to life so miraculously laying atop the soil with no water or care. (Who gets this emotional about a volunteer plant? I’m telling you, it’s the POWER of THE BEAN.) I agreed to adopt the bean, but I also told her about the grand plant that this little bean would become.
“It’ll make Grandma Beans, er, green beans, I mean. They’re really good picked early, steamed lightly and eaten with lemon, garlic and olive oil. It just needs a bigger pot and some string to climb.”
A few days later, Bithi came to take the bean back. She also said that if I wouldn’t mind, her mom down in Philadelphia would also like some beans seeds to plant and did I think they would be good for Indian cooking?
Pretty soon everyone in lab wanted to plant the beans I’d handed out. Sunny wanted them to plant in her back yard in Hamden, Sunghita wondered if they’d do okay in planter boxes on her fire escape, and Laurent wanted to plant them throughout his apartment to green up the place. Bean fever had set in.
Kristy took to the task with true scientific discipline. After interviewing me thoroughly on all aspects of bean germination and rearing, she headed to the nursery for supplies. As suggested, she carefully installed a trellis of string and eye hooks up the wall by her desk in lab. Each day, she reported to me with the latest developments,
“The soil’s kind of lumping up a bit. I think the bean is starting to grow. I only planted two days ago.”
“Is it normal for the bean to grow six inches in 24 hours?”
“Um, the bean has reached to top of the string and it won’t stop growing. Can I make it stop? It’s starting to grow in the levolor blinds and it’s spreading over into Kim’s bay.”
I didn’t really know what to tell her. My only experience was with my dad’s beans that were grown outdoors, surrounded by lots of other plants competing for nutrients, water and sunlight. Kristy’s bean was alone in a large pot sitting in the direct sun of her third floor window, growing in fancy potting soil laced heavily with Miracle Grow. Kristy’s bay mate Anja, perhaps following habits developed tending to her constantly hungry two-year-old son Tim, watered and clucked over the bean constantly. This thing might become a monster.
Much to her public dismay and private joy, Kristy’s bean did not and has not stopped growing. The levolors are now bending to make room for the bulky vines and more eyehooks and string have been installed to allow the bean to grow across the window. As I see it, this bean is not too far from attaining its species’ long-awaited position as a sacred legume of considerable influence. While on vacation, Kristy has left us with a calendar of who's on watering duty when. Though the hot summer days have caused most of us to slow down a bit in lab, our brains too cooked to focus on too many things at once, those assigned to bean water duty can still be seen diligently trekking from sink to windowsill carrying the 250 ml beaker, specially reserved for this purpose. And while spectacular feats of molecular biology prowess may not elicit so much as a smile from the boss, one can now find 15 highly trained scientists clapping and cooing with delight each time a little white blossom falls, revealing a microscopic bean growing underneath.
Fortunately, The Bean’s power only extends so far. For example, it does not affect the long-established ordering of the food chain, leaving me free to sample my first bean yesterday. It tasted bean-like, though perhaps with a little bit of a “lab” finish. What that taste is, I’m not exactly sure. Probably just the slightly sour flavor of paranoia cause by the knowledge that every rule book ever written wisely screams “NO EATING IN LAB!!” There isn’t actually a subsection prohibiting the consumption of foodstuffs GROWN in the lab, but then again, it probably didn’t occur to those regulatory types that someone would do such an absurd thing. But under the spell of The Bean, there’s no telling what people will do…
…eons creep by and each spring The Bean dutifully sprouts in the warming soil, climbs up trees, crawls over bushes, and eventually, when some lowly human discovers its pods are good eatin’, it obligingly spirals up an A-frame of bean poles…
…all the while, The Bean is satisfied with this low-profile existence, happy just to be taking up a small patch of ground in some scenic corner of the Mediterranean coast. Its contentment drawn from an unwavering certainty that some day, it will grow on every continent of the globe, planted in elegantly painted pots and nourished by the richest soil. Pilgrims will bring spring water from their distant lands and surrounding plant life will be kept in constant check so that The Bean is never shaded from sun’s rays.
Or not.
Maybe The Bean actually is just your average green bean, best when picked early, steamed lightly and served with lemon, garlic and olive oil. But really, it does seem a little spooky the way The Bean has spread over the course of only a couple of Bianchi-Campodonico generations. Hear me out on this one.
As its name implies, The Grandma Bean’s most recent genealogy traces back to my mom’s grandmother, who grew them in her well-tended garden in Roseville, California. To add to the romance and intrigue of The Bean, I like to think that Roseville Grandma carried a pocket full of bean seeds all the way across the Atlantic when she emigrated from Italy early last century. I have no proof that this is the case - she probably just dried out some beans she bought at the market in Roseville and planted them the next spring. But hey, conspiracy theories are all about drama, and what’s more dramatic than being a stowaway on a trans-Atlantic voyage?
( Conspiracy theory update, 22 June 2005. Recent intelligence gathering efforts have confirmed that The Bean did actually travel across the pond from Roseville Grandma's home town of San Ginese di Compito in Tuscany. A crafty bean indeed. Thanks for the info, Ma.)
In the decades following The Bean's happy years in the hot Roseville sun, it has spread quietly to Walnut Creek, momentarily back East to West Virginia when Mom and Dad did their ‘60’s thing, then back to Berkeley when three kids in a barn didn’t seem like that much fun afterall. In Piedmont, The Bean thrived and sensing that its moment of world domination was almost at hand, The Bean engineered its transport to many gardens throughout the Bay Area, including that of Mom’s manicurist Lu.
And finally, last summer, The Bean traveled east again where it took up residence in the posh, climate controlled, irrigated beds of the Yale Forestry School green house. Having re-crossed the continent, it appeared that The Bean's long-destined spread had now begun.
But alas! With the graduation of Michael, a.k.a. the guy with keys to the green house, The Bean had nowhere to grow this year. The sandy patch of lawn in front of my apartment is hardly fit for the grass that struggles to grow there and the handful of seeds I collected last year sat gathering dust in a weighing dish on my desk.
Here’s where The Bean’s crafty ways become more apparent. Earlier this spring, unaware of my role in The Grand Scheme, I wandered about my lab handing out bean seeds to people, explaining that in my family, these bean seeds were used in a game known simply as "Beaning." The single object of this game is to place these beans in the pockets, wallets, suitcases, etc... of the unsuspecting and wait for them to be discovered. In addition, vigilance to prevent oneself from being beaned is also key. That's it.
“Go forth and bean,” said I.
Days later, one such beaned individual name Bithi removed the bean from her pocket and placed it on the windowsill in her bathroom. Soon after that, some workmen doing repairs in her bathroom placed the bean on the soil of a potted plant nearby to clear their work area. Nature took its course and within a matter of days, Bithi came running to me in lab, anxiously clutching a yogurt cup full of dirt that now held the germinated bean seed.
“What do I DO?! I can’t grow anything! The plant in the pot where this thing sprouted died as soon as I brought it home! HELP!”
Bithi wanted me to take the bean away from her. She couldn’t bare killing it, she said, not after it had sprouted to life so miraculously laying atop the soil with no water or care. (Who gets this emotional about a volunteer plant? I’m telling you, it’s the POWER of THE BEAN.) I agreed to adopt the bean, but I also told her about the grand plant that this little bean would become.
“It’ll make Grandma Beans, er, green beans, I mean. They’re really good picked early, steamed lightly and eaten with lemon, garlic and olive oil. It just needs a bigger pot and some string to climb.”
A few days later, Bithi came to take the bean back. She also said that if I wouldn’t mind, her mom down in Philadelphia would also like some beans seeds to plant and did I think they would be good for Indian cooking?
Pretty soon everyone in lab wanted to plant the beans I’d handed out. Sunny wanted them to plant in her back yard in Hamden, Sunghita wondered if they’d do okay in planter boxes on her fire escape, and Laurent wanted to plant them throughout his apartment to green up the place. Bean fever had set in.
Kristy took to the task with true scientific discipline. After interviewing me thoroughly on all aspects of bean germination and rearing, she headed to the nursery for supplies. As suggested, she carefully installed a trellis of string and eye hooks up the wall by her desk in lab. Each day, she reported to me with the latest developments,
“The soil’s kind of lumping up a bit. I think the bean is starting to grow. I only planted two days ago.”
“Is it normal for the bean to grow six inches in 24 hours?”
“Um, the bean has reached to top of the string and it won’t stop growing. Can I make it stop? It’s starting to grow in the levolor blinds and it’s spreading over into Kim’s bay.”
I didn’t really know what to tell her. My only experience was with my dad’s beans that were grown outdoors, surrounded by lots of other plants competing for nutrients, water and sunlight. Kristy’s bean was alone in a large pot sitting in the direct sun of her third floor window, growing in fancy potting soil laced heavily with Miracle Grow. Kristy’s bay mate Anja, perhaps following habits developed tending to her constantly hungry two-year-old son Tim, watered and clucked over the bean constantly. This thing might become a monster.
Much to her public dismay and private joy, Kristy’s bean did not and has not stopped growing. The levolors are now bending to make room for the bulky vines and more eyehooks and string have been installed to allow the bean to grow across the window. As I see it, this bean is not too far from attaining its species’ long-awaited position as a sacred legume of considerable influence. While on vacation, Kristy has left us with a calendar of who's on watering duty when. Though the hot summer days have caused most of us to slow down a bit in lab, our brains too cooked to focus on too many things at once, those assigned to bean water duty can still be seen diligently trekking from sink to windowsill carrying the 250 ml beaker, specially reserved for this purpose. And while spectacular feats of molecular biology prowess may not elicit so much as a smile from the boss, one can now find 15 highly trained scientists clapping and cooing with delight each time a little white blossom falls, revealing a microscopic bean growing underneath.
Fortunately, The Bean’s power only extends so far. For example, it does not affect the long-established ordering of the food chain, leaving me free to sample my first bean yesterday. It tasted bean-like, though perhaps with a little bit of a “lab” finish. What that taste is, I’m not exactly sure. Probably just the slightly sour flavor of paranoia cause by the knowledge that every rule book ever written wisely screams “NO EATING IN LAB!!” There isn’t actually a subsection prohibiting the consumption of foodstuffs GROWN in the lab, but then again, it probably didn’t occur to those regulatory types that someone would do such an absurd thing. But under the spell of The Bean, there’s no telling what people will do…
posted by Eva Marie at 6:48 PM
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