MAY 11, 2026 – If Elon and his Tech Bros have their Apple wallets set on cruising to arid, dusty, rocky, lifeless Mars and pitching their tents there, I say, “Go right ahead . . . make my day” . . . er, “nine months there, nine months back, plus the time it takes to set up a tentative base, grow their own algae, and realize the place isn’t the Xanadu they thought it was.”
Me? I don’t need a billion bucks or even a million or even a single greenback to know how great we have it right here on God’s green earth. I’m not aware of any quarter of the universe explored thus far by our math, science and engineering prowess that harbors anything close to the wonders of our biosphere. I was reminded of this yesterday, but by no initiative of my own.
As the sun reached its zenith, my wife announced that she planned to go to the annual plant sale at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, a hearty hike from our neighborhood. She asked if I wanted to accompany her, but if not, whether I’d be willing to drive over later to load up whatever plants she bought. She’s always been the plant person of our household, which explains why she’s been to previous fairground plant sales and I haven’t—and why she can identify 30 to 40 varieties of shrub and flower species, and I can recognize only 3 to 4. I appreciate other people’s gardens, but except for a brief stint as a young kid, when with checkered success I cultivated “flowering carpets” (bordering my mother’s garden) out of Spencer’s Gifts catalogs, I’m simply not a “plant person.”[1] Nevertheless, the day was gorgeous, if still a bit on the cool side, and I thought it would be fun to accept Beth’s invitation to accompany her to the sale.
Little did I anticipate the impression that the extravaganza would have on my soul and imagination. The excursion proved to be “cosmic” in scale and wonder. I was not the same person at the end of the experience as I was at the start.
We arrived at the downswing of the three-day sale. A sizable crowd was still on hand, but the inestimable number of carts that remained in the corral, the length of the bounded “check-out” path, and the endless rows of plant racks bespoke of enormous crowds the previous two days. With the price of all remaining plants pruned by a third, in the main, Sunday’s attendees were bargain hunters.
As more of a people person than a plant person, I found myself initially observing people more than the plant life. In short order three patterns appeared. First, these folks weren’t casual browsers. They were on a mission. Everyone pushed or pulled a cart, and with shared intensity, people inspected the remaining plants on the racks—herbs, flowers, and vegetables. Second, people’s caps and T-shirts often served as modest and subtle clues to their political leanings, and all were leftward leaning: quotes by poets and slogans in support of peace and . . . plants. Third, plant people know no racial, ethnic or apparent socio-economic limits. We mingled reassuringly with a richly diverse cross-section of society. I felt very much at home . . . here on earth.
By all appearances, after the long, hard winter—more extreme than usual—these plant people were ready to get their hands . . . well, dirty . . . with the good clean earth, now thawed. Plants: what a perfect diversion, I thought, in these uncertain times.
Yes, plants. Once I turned to these, I was amazed by the variety—much as I feel when entering a big city/university bookstore.
Since Beth was on a mission—i.e. knew what she wanted—she fit in well with the crowd. Out of my element, I decided that it would best to have some skin in the game. But how? I decided to start at base level—as in basil. If I didn’t know much at all about flowers, I did know my herbs—plain basil and parsley. Little did I know just how little I know. After picking out two containers of “Lemon Basil” (among no fewer than 19 varieties), I called it quits, but not before getting hopelessly separated from Beth. I phoned her, and to my relief, she answered.
When I caught up to her, however, she directed me to “go back and get the rack number for the three containers of lavender” that she’d picked up way back in the herb district. With trepidation, I ventured out on my own again. Once among the lavender, I discovered how many varieties there were of that herb: not simply “English,” “Spanish,” and “Other,” but an insanely conceived number of sub-categories: “Annet,” “Arctic Snow,” “Big Time,” “Cynthia Johnson,” “Lady,” “Munstead,” “Platinum Blonde,” “Silver Mist,” “Anouk Deep Rose,” “Anouk Doublescape” . . . to name a few.
As I hurried back to report my findings to Beth, I contemplated what a vastly improved world we’d have if more people dropped whatever mischief they were up to in favor of learning all about garden plants and gardening. I thought about the wide range of people I knew who were “plant people”—white collar, blue collar, wealthy and not so much, the simple and the sophisticated. I thought about my late crazy uncle, UB, who knew more about tulip bulbs than most anyone born and bred in Holland, appropriate enough since he lived in the Garden State . . . about Cliff, “our man on the ground” in New Jersey, il impresario straordinario, the former semi-pro hockey star turned rock star and back-up for Arrowsmith, who knocked my socks off one day when he casually walked past UB’s garden and off-handedly ticked off the Latin names of a dozen different flowers (When I asked him how in the world he knew so much about flowers, he explained that in his youth he’d been conscripted into working for his father’s florist operation) . . . my wife’s male cousins and cousin-in-law who are to gardening what “First Wave” skiers are to the American Birkebeiner Marathon X-C Ski Race. And then there were the gardeners of all gardeners, my friends Jack and Linda Hoeschler, who commissioned the design, construction and dynamic management of one of the country’s premier Japanese gardens—a work of “plant art,” which occupied their entire St. Paul yard, the size of a city park.
For close to an hour and a half we moved slowly up and down the rows, as my plant-person spouse inspected a flower plant here and a flower plant there—now and again adding two or three to the cart. Occasionally, she’d exchange information with other plant people—what worked, what didn’t work with the cultivation of one flower variety or another. I was mesmerized by the process.
While waiting for the cashier to run up our total, I took a gander at a copy of the special 60-page newspaper published for the event. The publication was loaded with information. On the last two pages was a Latin/English index of a gazillion plant names. Two a day and in 50 years, I thought, I’d have 90% of the list under solid mental management.
But the best feature of the entire event was its purpose as a fund-raiser for The Friends [Quaker] School of Minnesota. Our winters here can be long, but our community spirit more than compensates.
Finally, as a newbie small-plant person ready to garden on a (small) beginner scale, I say, “’Ail to the herbs!”
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
[1] As my long-term blog-followers know, I’m very much a “tree person,” and since trees are plants, of course, I suppose I qualify as a “plant person” on the arboreal scale.
