The Essential Earthman by Henry Mitchell (Houghton Mifflin, 1992)

A collection of pieces by the late great garden columnist for the Washington Post. You can open almost any page at random and find something to giggle or enthuse over. After rhapsodizing about plumbago, he insists that he’s not trying to oversell it, concluding that it is “merely, a minor ornament of gardens along with being I suppose, all a plant ever needs to be.”  From start to finish, the book blooms with wit and wisdom.