Okay, I'll admit it. I may be the only gardener who didn't know who the hell Henry Mitchell was when this book was suggested for the book club. Let me bow my head in shame.....okay. Now that I've become introduced to Mr. Mitchell, I can see why so many of the bloggers suggested his books. I've just started reading Earthman (didn't get to it this weekend as I planned to) and am on the chapter "Earthman vs. the Seasons--Winter" so I'm not very far in the book. I've already run across several quotes that I've hurriedly scribbled down in my journal:


"Everthing grows for everybody. Everything dies for everybody, too." (Quite possibly my all-time fave gardening quote. I love how straightforward, no-nonsense Mitchell was.)


"We do not, in our gardens, need rarities, nor more land, nor a better climate (though one can conceive of improvements here). We merely need more labor and less grumbling, more brains and fewer store-bought geegaws, and most of all more awareness of what is in front of us in the garden."


"There are no green thumbs or black thumbs. There are only gardeners and non-gardners. Gardeners are the ones who ruin after ruin get on with the high defiance of nature herself, creating, in the very face of her chaos and tornado, the bower of roses and the pride of irises. It sounds very well to garden a "natural way." You may see the natural way in any desert, any swamp, any leech-filled laurel hell. Defiance, on the other hand, is what makes gardeners."

This last quote is especially appropriate for this time of year, when we in the north are on the cusp of another long, cold winter. I know, for a fact, that my roses will suffer winter-kill this year, as they do every year. I know that despite the cover I try to give it, my hydrangea will also lose most of next year's flower buds to winter-kill. I know that the mums that I bought this fall and am trying to coddle so that they make it through the year will most likely be lost, despite my best intentions. I know that the squirrels will dig up half of the tulip bulbs on my property, as they do every year, and replant them in odd places, so I have the odd "Greenland" tulip growing up in the middle of the coral bells. And, since I am unwilling to sacrifice even a single bloom in the name of garden orderliness, it will stay there, its pink and green petals clashing with the maroon of the heuchera, until the foliage ripens and I feel safe moving it. So why grow the roses, the hydrangea, the mums, and the tulips, even knowing I will be cursing plentifully come spring? Because what is life without its quirks, without the challenge of trying to figure out yet another way to prevent almost certain trouble? Because one day that spring will roll around when my hydrangea is full of fat buds ready to burst and the squirrels will have found another gardener's tulips to play "musical bulbs" with. And when that day comes, I'll have the satisfaction of a beautiful garden, as well as feeling pretty damned pleased with myself.

So, there's a little taste of Mitchell on this rainy, gray Michigan morning. If anyone out there feels like sharing a favorite Mitchell quote, I'd love to hear it.


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