Fran Sorin, over at the truly excellent garden blog Gardening Gone Wild, wrote a post recently about "The Pushiness of Chrysanthemums." In her post, she stated that she finds all of the mums dotting her neighborhood at this time of year to be "distasteful." Homeowners buy them, sometimes in every available color, and plant them wherever they can fit them in. She also makes the point that she believes that adding the sharp colors of mums to falls already rich tapestry of colors is just "cruel." Well.....everyone's entitled to their opinion

I will state proudly that I love mums. I buy them every year, and they make my fall garden feel warm, welcoming and just...fall-like. There are many people, myself included, who believe that fall just isn't fall without cheerful pots of mums lining the front porch steps. To me, mums are like that last breath of fresh air before ducking inside for the winter. Their color, which I think of as "vibrant" rather than "sharp," brings me gently into our long, cold, gray Michigan winters in the way that something more delicate, like an anemone, never could. I understand those people who buy them in every color and stick them in any bare spot they can find----this is the garden's last hurrah, and the season will end in high color and plenty of blooms. We grasp the last bit of color and vibrancy we can, and the memory sustains us until the first green shoots of spring arrive. Planting mums is a fall tradition, and one that no gardener or "yardener," as Jeff Ball would call them, should ever be ashamed of.

I'll take the bold, strong colors of mums in the last vestiges of the growing season. I've never been one of those people who prefers quiet, pleasant, subdued people or plants. Give me loud laughter, off-color jokes, strong opinions, and colors that make you look twice. Life is too short to be lived quietly, in the garden or out of it.