Purple Pole Beans

This spring I bought a packet of Purple Podded Pole Bean seeds.  I'm a sucker for red or purple vegetables. Maybe they just seem tastier if they aren't green (This year I bought Red Malabar Spinach, a couple varieties of eggplant, and a purple tomato variety along with my pole beans). Our pole beans are the one thing in our garden that's really thriving. (Please excuse my blurry pictures. A two-year-old ran off with my camera, so I used the iPod, which needs some improvement in the auto-focus department).

Here are the pole bean plants climbing all over their trellis:

I love the pretty little purple flowers.

But the coolest thing about them are the bean pods themselves.  See that deep purple color?

 When you snap them, you can see that they really are green beans with a thin purple coating

 
But then you throw them in a pot and boil them for a few minutes and abracadabra...







You have green beans!

Pretty cool, huh?

Legoland

We went to Legoland yesterday. Bonnie organized a Home School group visit that got us in for a pretty good deal. We had about 25 kids and their families. The older kids liked the roller coasters and even Andrew overcame his fears and by the end of the day was wishing he could ride them over and over again. The Legoland park is where the old Cypress Gardens park used to be and they did a good job of maintaining much of what the old theme park included. Cypress Gardens was the first theme park in Florida built in the 30s. The new park still has the beautiful botanical gardens including an impressive Banyan tree. They also kept the live waterskiing shows, but with a Lego Pirates theme. It was a long day and we were all very worn out but all had a good time.