My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

by Carl H. Klaus

My Vegetable Love offers a detailed daily record of gardenng, loving, and living during a single growing season—from the first outdoor planting in early spring to the final fall harvest shortly after Thanksgiving. Yet Klaus describes far more than the toils and triumphs of tending vegetables, as his observations encompass the day-to-day changes in weather and wildlife as well as the life changes in his pets, his wife, and himself. As Patricia Hampl wrote, “Beneath the simplicity of this beguiling gardener's journal lies the captivating story of good life and true love. In the spirit of M. F. K. Fisher's writing about food and drink, Carl Klaus has found in his garden a model of the enduring passions of life and death.”

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Amy Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a gardener who likes reading about what a regular guy is doing in his vegetable garden, you might enjoy this book. The author taught nonfiction writing at the U. of Iowa and his prose is a pleasure to read, so much so that I found myself reading parts of it aloud to my husband. Highly recommended.

[Angela Gibson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This would be an excellent book to read one gardening entry per day. I'm enjoying it too much to ration it! Fortunately it's worth reading again. So maybe next reading I'll find the restraint to read only one entry for each day.

[Cath Van · Rating 4 out of 5]

Possibly one could read on in My Vegetable Love and not like I did; one entry a day. I suppose it would lead to a completely different reading experience of this daybook.
I slowly found myself reading with bifocal vision: the season's growing process on one side, and the 'how' of this daily record on the other. He is so good at the 'how', Carl Klaus. So versatile. As one has to be when day after day the 500 to 600 word piece is about the same vegetable plot, the weather, the proceeds, the harvesting and the eating. Could I summarize My Vegetable Love, A Journal of a Growing Season I'd say it is about connecting and inter-connectedness and I loved reading it.

[Lee Kofman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found Klaus's project of recording his gardening activities on a daily basis really tedious and self-indulgent. I liked his passion for gardening and food and at times found his cooking descriptions quite inspiring. However, life distilled to such pursuits is really a tedious one. There wasn’t much urgency in the book even though some urgent threads did run through it – aging and cancer of Klaus’s wife whose character I found annoying in her self-righteousness.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this college before I even knew how to water plants. I loved it anyway. Now that I have my own garden I'm reading this again for inspiration.

[Alice Cooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

What fun to read the trials and joys of gardening from one who really know how! Also insight into people, family and life in general.

[Kelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was slow going at first, but I'm really getting into it now. And I've really been into food/veg books this summer.

[Ethan · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I am an old man I think I will enjoy this journal far more than I do now.