Why do we garden, anyway?

The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden

by

William Alexander

I failed to read the subtitle carefully. He's on the quest for the perfect garden, not the perfect tomato.  I rushed through the first half of the book wondering when it was going to get around to comparisons on tomatoes. Not that I'm obsessed with tomatoes; I was just thinking the book was going to concentrate on them. It never did, although he did use the final accounting of how much he spent versus how much he harvested to come up with the estimate for the cost of a single home-grown Brandywine.

By the way, I'm not the expert here, but I don't think the picture on the book cover is a Brandywine tomato. The one I grew--yes, only one--was pink not red, larger, and flattened. I expect the publisher sent an aide to the supermarket to snap a shot of whatever was available.

Back to the point--I enjoyed the book. The Battle of Bambi was succeeded by the Saga of  Superchuck, a groundhog so much in love with garden produce that he shrugged off electric shocks of increasing voltage.

Mr. Alexander ended up philosophical about the business.

Gardening is, by its very nature, an expression of the triumph of optimism over experience. No matter how bad this year was, there's always next year. Experience doesn't count. Just because the carrots have been knobby, misshapen, and somewhat bitter four years in a row doesn't mean they're going to be knobby and misshapen next year....
Blessedly the voice of experience, the voice that should be crying, "Oh, puh-lease!" never pipes up in the garden. And I, for one, hope it never does. It is not wanted there.