Beans
by: Mary Oliver
They're not like peaches or squash. Plumpness isn't for them. They like being lean, as if for the narrow path. The beans themselves sit quietly inside their green pods. Instinctively one picks with care, never tearing down the fine vine, never not noticing their crisp bodies, or feeling their willingness for the pot, or the fire.
I have thought sometimes that something--I can't name it--watches as I walk the rows, accepting the gift of their lives to assist mine.
I know what your think: this is foolishness. They're only vegetables. Even the blossoms with which they begin are small and pale, hardly significant. Our hands or minds, our feet hold more intelligence. With this I have no quarrel.
But, what about virtue?
The definition of "virtue" is "the quality of doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong." I agree with Oliver that beans do not have intelligence. They don't have to think about sprouting or taking root or blossoming. These things are hardwired into their nature. However, the question Oliver asks at the end of the poem is whether beans know the difference between doing good and doing bad.
Beans are willing to go to the cooking pot and fire. They sacrifice themselves to plucking fingers. Of course, beans don't have mouths to protest or feet to run away. They just sit in the soil, offering up the gift of their lives to save Oliver's.
I am a person who has a hard time saying "no" to anything, but especially to people I love who are in need. I'm not sure if that makes me as virtuous as beans. Certainly, I know the difference between right and wrong. Helping an injured bird--right. Paying to see a movie based on QAnon conspiracy theories--bad. Virtue is all about making the world a better place without harming anyone or anything.
I've never had much of a green thumb. One year, when both of my children were very young, I decided that I was going to grow pumpkins in my backyard. I got some pumpkin sprouts from a good friend. Went out and bought two, 50-pound bags of good, enriched soil. Spread the dirt and planted the sprouts. Then, I watered. And watered. And watered.
To my surprise, the pumpkins grew and, after a couple weeks, blossomed with yellow flowers. For my non-gardening disciples, I will explain that pumpkin flowers eventually mature into pumpkins. I was doing something virtuous and amazing. Instead of supporting commercial pumpkin farms where pesticides and unnatural growth enhancers destroy the environment, I was growing my pumpkins organically, without the use of harmful chemicals.
And then, rabbits began to appear at night and in the mornings to nibble away my pumpkin blossoms. Not only that, but the tiny pumpkins that did manage to escape the jaws of rabbit death eventually rotted on their stems before they achieved any measurable size.
I waged war on those varmints (as Granny Clampett would have called them) all summer long. Some nights, I just chased them away with noise and body movements. Other times, I resorted to my garden hose, spraying the little bastards until they disappeared. (They always came back.)
After three months of tireless pumpkin duty, I had three pitiful pumpkins the size of avocados. That's it. Hundreds of dollars in water and soil. Hours and hours of being Mr. McGregor to all the Peter Rabbits within five square miles of my home. All I got from the experience was a certainty that I was a serial vegetable killer, plus a severe aversion to members of the Lepus family.
I like to think I was being virtuous. My kids loved watering those plants and chasing rabbits with me. Plus, I was teaching them about being self-sustaining and living off the land. In my mind, I was just one step away from being Pa Ingalls.
In the end, it wasn't a successful exercise in plant growth or virtue, unfortunately . One night, about the beginning of October, I made a midnight trip to Walmart, bought three large pumpkins, went home, and put those pumpkins in my pumpkin patch out back. When my daughter and son woke up the next morning, I told them that the pumpkin fairy had come under cover of darkness and transformed some of our blossoms into gigantic pumpkins. My kids were thrilled.
By that point in the whole adventure, my virtue had taken a back seat to fatherly panic. I didn't want my kids to think I was a loser. So, I cheated a little, and it worked.
Am I proud of what I did? Not really. Did I ever try to grow pumpkins again. Absolutely not. But, for three months one summer, my kids learned about plant growth and soil and water and rabbits. That's pretty cool.
Saint Marty, however, is the Ted Bundy of the vegetable kingdom.
I remember your pumpkin 🎃 experience!
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