Jack and the Beanstalk

Jack – of the Beanstalk fame – is the ultimate anti-hero.

In the fable, he climbs a beanstalk to hide in a man’s house then robs and murders him.

Sure, the man’s a giant, but just because he’s deformed doesn’t mean he deserves to die.

So when our delightful elderly neighbour passed a handful of “magic beans” over the fence, I accepted the gift with trepidation.

These were no ordinary beans.

Legend had it they were smuggled from Italy after the Second World War by a family of market gardeners.

Their fruit was said to be the sweetest in all the land.

How could I resist?

I grabbed the illicit beans and hastily buried them in circles in the veggie garden before Customs found out.

Imagine being charged with bean smuggling. I’d never live it down.

“Oh, she seemed like such a nice lady. But I heard she couldn’t resist a nibble of a sweet young bean. Ended up in jail. Such a shame. Why didn’t she just say no?”

At this point in the fable, Mother Nature played her part.

The bounteous rainfall of the past few months had turned my meagre veggie patch into the Amazon Rainforest.

I half-expected to find lost tribes in there.

Hacking through the thicket with a scythe (or is that a sickle? I always get those mixed up) I discovered a cornucopia of cherry tomatoes, zucchini, and continental beans.

Our five-year-old, Taj Jack, lived up to his middle name, trying to climb the gigantic beanstalk towering above my head.

The stakes collapsed under his weight, leaving a tangle of limbs and vines reminiscent of a scene from The Evil Dead.

(In the 1980s horror film, one of the victims is attacked by vines possessed by an evil spirit. It still gives me nightmares.)

Undeterred, my greedy little grub brushed himself off and began grabbing at the beans, some the length of a man’s forearm.

They lived up to the hype: fresh, crunchy and lip-smacking good.

Why can’t supermarket beans taste like this?

Oh – that’s right – they stick them in a cold room for a year before they get to the shelves.

Ditto apples, which taste like floury, wet cardboard.

The weather conditions are perfect for planting, so why not grow your own edible garden?

It’s a great lesson for city kids who think cobs of corn grow in their own special packaging.

And it’s not that much work, either.

In previous years, my veggie patches have died because I paid too much attention to them.

This year, ignorance was bliss: While my back was turned, new life flourished.

At the end of our fable, there was no giant at the top of the beanstalk.

But each and every day I feel like we’re slaying the supermarket giants, Coles and Woolies, by growing our own produce, no matter how small.

And that is a heroic victory.