Building wigwams for runner and french beans

I think you will agree, these are three solidly looking wigwams.  I forgot to photograph the wigwams on construction,
so this is a few weeks later, the beans have made rapid progress.  This also demonstrates the closeness of the beans to the neighbours

When one turns the front garden into an impromptu vegetable bed, one also has to construct wigwams.  I have never constructed a wigwam before.  Theoretically I believe the correct practise is to build your wigwam and then plant the beans around, but that would require the canes to be in ones possession when one plants the beans, which I did not have.  This is the problem with trying something new in the garden, it always results in having to invest in more equipment. I have sticks for broad beans, sticks for peas, sticks for sweat peas, but nothing longer.  And I needed a bit of length here.  So off to the garden centre I went, mother in tow.

Unfortunately I hit the garden centre after the locusts had already been through, buying every cane below eight foot and above five. After deciding that eight foot sticks would not fit into my car without some serious alteration on their part, however I attempted to wedge them in, we had to leave for another.  Typically this did not have cane supply problems, with every size imaginable covered.
We settled on seven foot canes as the appropriate length, but even these had to be wedged into the glove compartment on the passenger side, pass right under the mother's ear to be wedged right in the back of the boot. Getting them home was just stage one.  Now I had to set too and lasso them together.  I did not think this would be a difficult task.  I tried my best, but apparently wigwam making is harder than it looks, or at least it is if your making them to the mother's standards.

Being the daughter of the vegetable growing god that was my grandfather, I asked her to take a supervisory role.  Accordingly she vanished and I found her drinking tea and snacking on biscuits indoors, by which point I had one of my wigwams in place and was just going to lasso a whole load of twine around the top.  Despite opting out earlier, she declared I had done it all wrong and my wigwam would not withstand gale force winds.  Why she is expecting such gusts I don't know, we don't live in a terribly windy place.  So I told her if she thought it could be done better, feel free.  So the mother had to take to the soil and start making some reef knots.

I think the mother thinks the bamboo canes are the next Houdini.  Nobody is getting free
from this lassoing

She didn't like this for two reasons.  One, she was in her good skirt.  Two, she had until now believed she could act like a front garden full of beans had been thrust upon her rather than she was taking an active role.  No more.  Also her tea went cold, but that's by the by.  Anyway shes much taller than I and therefore far more suited to wigwam making.  She did a fine job, although complained incessantly.  It will probably take several hours to prize them apart at the end of the season the level of lasso she went into.

She says it suddenly looks like we have instantaneous beans because as they had been in a few weeks they had been putting on a bit of length, albeit along the ground.  While she was up-top in construction, I was coiling the beans up the poles.  I think it looks really pretty, very cottagey garden.  The parents were concerned it would be very vegetable patch, but beans have flowers and a whimsical air.  Not like im out there growing cabbages, not yet anyway.  It must look good because my neighbour told the mother while I was on holiday how much she liked the new front border, saying there was always something new to see.  I just love being proven right.

On the plus side if anybody had a mind to knick the canes, they would end up
giving up.  I dread trying to get them apart.  On a brighter note I love a good bean stalk coil
up a pole, its just so pleasing

So hopefully the wigwams will withstand the British hurricane season, having returned from holiday I can confirm they are all still very much in situ, and hopefully I will get a fine crop.  I am however concerned that passers by may feel inclined to pinch a bean or two on their way past.  I may have to erect signage and tell that neighbour to stop eyeing up my beans.