Lazy Wife

I'm on the phone.

I'm on the phone, searching out beans. This year, Rob and I have secured a plot in a nearby community garden, and I am launched by excitement into premature gardening overdrive. I spent a goodly chunk of this morning planting tomato seeds into infuriatingly dusty peat mix, armed with a sprayer and a chopstick. Assorted Brandywines, Stupice, tiny yellow Coyotes. All seems to have gone well. Now, talking to an organic heirloom seed seller, from whom I have ordered Northeaster and Rattlesnake beans, I describe the exact bean I am seeking.
It's one of those ones you can eat at any stage, I say. It's really easy to shell; I think it was one of the first string-less beans...
Ah, she says, you're looking for 'Lazy Wife'.

Lazy Wife. The name kind of says it all, doesn't it?

I spend a moment picturing the harried farm wife of old, awake before dawn coaxing the embers in the wood stove to life before going out to pump water for breakfast, tea, a day of washing and cleaning and cooking. She pauses for a moment, perhaps at the grave-site of one of her nine children to say a quick prayer, then hurries back to the kitchen, lugging the metal water pail. She lives in a time when any effort to lighten her impossibly heavy load will be regarded as "lazy".
Yes, I say. That's the one. That's the bean I want.