Not that I told my cousin that last year when she kindly sent me beans for sowing.
Our mutual maternal grandmother, Mom, had given me some of the heirloom seeds decades ago.
After growing them I neglected to save any seeds for a following harvest.
At the time of the gift, Mom made a point of telling me she did not share the beans with everyone.
They were special because they had been brought to New Zealand from near the Switzerland- Italian border by her mother-in-law’s father, Joseph Carmine, when he arrived in the 1800s (hence the Carmine name).
I was too ashamed to tell Mom of my slackness. Maybe she was under the impression I had her good gardening genes.
Regular readers of this column, and anyone who has blundered into my garden, will know that is not true.
I love other people’s gardens and can hold up my end of a gardening conversation thanks to knowledge gained during years of involvement with the Portobello Plant Fair. But my gardening mainly consists of enthusiastically planting things, ignoring them, and then being overjoyed if they survive.
Occasional wild weeding forays litter my property with piles of rotting vegetation.
On the plus side, I like to think my behaviour has been instrumental in the success of local plant nurseries as I keep returning to buy more plants to momentarily replace the dead ones.
That oft quoted observation about insanity being repeating the same thing and expecting different results is not true of me.
I know I am sane because I know better than to expect a different result. It is reassuring.
This time, I was determined to do better with the Carmine beans, but in case my resolve faltered, I had the wisdom to entrust the Third Born with some of the seeds.
At his home in Invercargill he is a more enthusiastic and successful vegetable gardener than I will ever be at my place.
I have tried not to think there could be an unfortunate parallel between this and baby boomers wanting to pass the climate change solution buck to the younger generation.
And, at the same time, baby boomers expect young people to sort this stuff out, many of us are busy coming up with spurious arguments not to give 16 and 17-year-olds the vote.
Is the worry that involvement of more young people in politics might draw attention to the inertia around governments’ climate change action? Heavens, if any future government did something to effect real change we might have to go beyond thinking sorting our recycling is doing our bit.
It has been pleasantly surprising, given the craziness of some of the debates around the current Dunedin City Council table, to see the council back lowering the voting age to 16 in local government elections, with a recommendation this is supported by beefed-up civics education.
But I digress. Back to the Carmines.
In January when my cousin announced she was planning a February visit I felt a mild panic. My plants were looking pretty lush — indeed we had to cobble together a higher "fence" for them to climb up — but while there were a few flowers, there was not a bean in sight.
She was unperturbed. She had faith the Carmines would do the business.
In the end she was unable to visit, but when I returned home in late February from a round of rellie pestering in Murchison and beyond, I was thrilled to find the Carmines in full swing in all their red-speckled glory.
Before I began unpacking,
I picked a handful, cooked them quickly, tossed them in butter, salt and pepper and scoffed their vivid green beauty straight from the pan. (In their cooked state the speckles disappear.)
Delicious. But it is more than the taste. When dealing with them, their history is never far from my mind.
What were Joseph’s dreams and fears when he brought those beans from Switzerland to this unknown place? Are the beans still grown by our far-flung relatives in his hometown?
The answers are not important. Somehow, the persistence of those humble beans gives me hope amid the world’s turmoil and uncertainty.
It might be silly, but it is welcome, all the same.
P.S. The consensus of the Murchison A & P Show’s cooks’ cabal (or should that be coven?) is that I have wronged the Christchurch Cook by twice reporting she came second in the baking challenge in 2021 (after leaving out a vital ingredient) when she took out first place.
I have been accused of single-handedly destroying their faith in mainstream media.
I apologise for all of these sins.
– Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
