Happy birthday, Henry Mitchell

Henry Mitchell was born on this day in 1923 and died on November 12, 1993. I knew next to nothing about garden writers or Henry Mitchell when I first picked up The Essential Earthman, but it was love at first read. I'll try to refrain from my usual gushing (although you can find plenty of that in this blog's "Henry Mitchell" category). Instead, let me offer up a sampling of his wit and wisdom, plucked almost at random from a quick flip through the pages of Henry Mitchell on Gardening:

From "Thomas Jefferson, an Optimistic Gardener":
This broadening of scope is the single most definitive quality of the true gardener: if you fail in small things and cannot perfectly manage your small garden, then expand and take on three times as much. That is gardening orthodoxy and Jefferson believed it with all his heart.

From "The Perfect Moment":
With tender new leaves and flowers all about, it is easy for the gardener to think he has done well. Payday will come in summer, when all defects shall be revealed. This is Scarlett O'Hara time in the garden. Tomorrow is another day. These are the few days the gods give us to jump up and down in. Tomorrow, when all that is wrong will be evident in the garden — tomorrow, well I say tomorrow is spinach and I say the hell with it.

From "After the Rain, a Deluge of Tasks":
As I watched Nightline on television, it suddenly struck me that the moonflower vines have not yet been planted. The seeds should have gone in the first of May. That program specializes in things to worry about and often reminds me of dreadful deficiencies in the garden.

From "The Wings of August":
In 1933 I had my picture in the paper in the town I grew up in, with the mayor standing beside me. We looked equally stupid, as I recall, but the point was that I was planting a crape myrtle that had been proclaimed the official tree of the city. It does seem so long ago, and I often wonder if those crape myrtles I planted as a kid are still in that garden.

From "Support Groups on High":
The totalitarian frame of mind is now so common in America that I know there are apartments in which you cannot have a dog, cat, or pet mouse or grow anything on the balcony railing. Such apartments also forbid corn bread in the kitchen, I suppose, and if you like tyranny you go along with it, but my advice, if you find yourself living in such a place, is to wake up, tell the landlord to go to hell, and move out.

From "The Latest Dirt on the Garden's Doings":
Some months ago I had to cancel a talk in Lawrence, Kansas, and a television crew arrived here to show, I suppose, that I was seriously off my feed and could not travel. We waddled about the garden, which was ill kempt. Months later I finally screwed up the courage to play the tape of this ill-considered venture, and as I had feared (in my initial protests at the very idea of television), it showed me as rather fat and far from youthful. Talk about distortions. But the star of the program was a mockingbird, singing in top form at top volume. Yet at the time of the filming we were unaware of so sweet a songster as we galumphed about. The moral is clear enough, that most of the beauty of a garden we were oblivious to, being preoccupied with absurd concerns about bugs on the nasturtiums or a certain rounding out of the body. And I will say this for the garden in that film, and it's about all I can say for it: it was rather funny, and the growth was as luxuriant as a jungle — it showed a place where mockingbirds sing like mad.

Comments

[avril]

Per my request last Christmas, my husband gave me a copy of Henry Mitchell's "On Gardening" which I have dutifully doled out in its month-to-month format to make it last the whole year. I must confess, however, that I sometimes read ahead because you just can't get enough Henry!

[Chan S.]

I am in awe of your discipline and restraint. And I'm with you...I can't get enough of Henry either.

[Kathy]

By Henry's definition I am a very orthodox gardener. You must keep a special calendar with all your favorites authors, artists, etc. on it.

[Chan S.]

Me too (or, in my husband's words, when I first let slip just how much garden space I was planning to take over from the lawn: "I really think you're biting off way more than you can chew." But now he's a convert!). In Henry Mitchell's case, I did a little research to find his birthdate. I hope that somehow, somewhere, his centenary will be appropriately celebrated by those who are still around in 2023.

[Lynn S]

I love that first one! That is so ME. Also like "Support Groups on High". I could not live in a place like that. I would get thrown out because I would do all the things I was not allowed to do just to tell them 'you can't tell me what to do with my place.'

[Chan S.]

I am especially fond of "Support Groups on High" also (I say, you tell 'em, Henry!).