life is like a magic bean

I have some amazing beans growing in my garden. Called 'Purple King', they produce a beautiful, deep purple bean that can grow to nearly twenty centimetres in length. In the pot, the beans cook into the soft green colour one expects of a bean. I toyed with the idea of eating them in all their purple rawness (they looked so delicious and tempting), until I discovered raw beans contain compounds found to be poisonous to humans. So we're eating green beans the traditional way and they taste good.

There's something in heat induced transmutation I think: poisonous purple beans become green and edible, gold becomes pure gold, and summer transforms inside and out. Lackadaisical as this summer is proving to be, each laid back, sun kissed moment leaves behind a warm deposit.

I was in the kitchen cooking up a mini storm this afternoon (Raspberry Curd Swirl Cake) when I noticed a lightness that has been absent for some time. I breathed deeply of the kitchen aromas (heaven must surely smell of Raspberry Curd Swirl Cake), turned my face to the sunlight that streamed in the window and disbelievingly felt around the outer reaches of my heart, as if testing my legs with ginger steps after a heavy fall. There's ragged edges there for sure, but I'm still intact. Healing even.

The sun is shining, the clouds are fluffy, the beans are purple, the cake divine, the chickens dandy (the one that still lives anyway), the house clean. Everything just feels brighter, which is nice.