Free harvest dinner wraps up a beany summer

Photo by avlxyz via Flickr/Creative Commons.
By Christina Olson

Want to enjoy a free-for-fall community supper with your neighbors? Then plan on meeting at the Garden House (2336 15th Ave. S.) on Friday, October 11, at 6 p.m. to enjoy what many places in America do when the leaves turn color –- gather for a harvest meal.

This spring and summer the Beacon Hill Garden Club and Rockit Community Arts, with help from the Department of Neighborhoods, co-sponsored a growing project — Beacon, a Hill of Beans! — to encourage neighbors to grow some food for their plates.

You may remember the Bean Bonanza in April, with free seeds, soil, growing advice and the bean buffet. Beanheads were seen at the Cinco de Mayo celebration, and at the Beacon Hill Festival giving away seeds (where we learned the mayor is a beanhead and promised to plant our seeds). We made bean necklaces and constructed bean trellises of Beacon Hill bamboo at the June Beacon Rocks. Then there appeared the installation of demonstration gardens at El Centro (24 planters of heirloom beans) and the Jefferson Community Center (the awesome Beanhenge). Not content with single site bean fun, they then bedecked Beacon Ave storefronts into a Boulevard of Beans with pots of scarlet runners. Neighbors were seen marching around with bean-baggies, to harvest a side for dinner. The Wall of Beans at the Station coffeehouse delighted local hummingbirds—almost an excess of color and nectar!

Now it’s time for the Beanheads to close out the project, celebrate our teamwork and thank the neighbors for their support of our project (hundreds of hours of community work). Please come have supper with us! We’ll have some delicious world bean dishes, salad, cornbread and dessert. There will be seeds to share and swap (not all beans, but plenty of them) and we’ll play some rousing rounds of bingo. Unfortunately Bean-o has declined sponsorship of this event, but we feel “propelled” to carry on.

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