Chicken Soup for the Gardener's Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Cynthia Brian, Cindy Buck, Marion Owen, Pat Stone and Carol Sturgulewski

I live in a third story apartment with no porch or yard.  I miss gardening.  I've had a few gardens, but nothing like the garden of my dreams, so I thought with this book I would live vicariously.  And I did, a little bit.

Chicken Soup for the Gardener's Soul explores the love of planting and growing things, whether it be food, flowers or trees.  Just the act of getting in the dirt and making something come alive can be very satisfying.  This book explored many different topics about gardening from The Joy of Gardening, Blossoming Friendships, Love in Bloom, Making a Difference, Little Sprouts, The Seasons of Life, Overcoming Obstacles, The Family Tree & Potpourri.  One of my favorite stories was about a little girl and her birthday party, where instead of cake, everyone enjoyed home canned soup, and noone thought of her as being poor.  All the stories were very nice, and I did notice quite a few were about roses (which I don't particularly care for aside from their cooking uses), but luckily, just as many were about vegetable and fruit growing.  And there was even a story about lilacs, my favorite.

Gardener's are a special sort, and like to share.  And there area  lot of stories about people sharing the wealth of their gardens in this book.  But as much as we read about the Gardener's here, I never really got a sense of depth about any of them.  The stories were just too short to really explore the person who inspired them.  There are a wide variety of peple represented in this book; couples, single people, older people, children, etc.  I'd say there is probably a story for everyone.

As with there not being much depth of people, I also didn't feel that there was much depth of story in this book either.  Like the flowers, they were pretty to look at, but you're forever at a distance and don't get to experience them up close or get in the dirt and plant them.  It's almost like seeing a picture of a flower, nice, but leaves you wanting more.  This is a quick read though.  You can take one story at a time or read it all in one sitting.

I enjoyed this book but it didn't lessen my desire for a garden.  Guess it's time to go live vicariously at the greenhouses.

Chicken Soup for the Gardener's Soul
Copyright 2000
352 pages