Broad beans in bloom

Hazel squatted on his haunches and stared at the orderly forest of small, glaucous trees with their columns of black-and-white bloom. He had never seen anything like this. Wheat and barley he knew, and once he had been in a field of turnips. But this was entirely different from any of those and seemed, somehow, attractive, wholesome, propitious. True, rabbits could not eat these plants: he could smell that. But they could lie safely among them for as long as they liked, and they could move through them easily and unseen.  - Watership Down

Having never grown or even seen these plants before, I have been feeling very much like Hazel and Pipkin and Bigwig as I kneel in the garden this week. Tomatoes and sunflowers I knew, but this is something entirely different. How nice to have that experience without leaving my yard.