The New York Times said this would inspire anyone who read it to grow a vegetable garden. So, as a person who has been procrastinating on that very task for four years now, I went ahead and ordered it.

I'd have to say that it didn't do its job very well. I'm sure Michelle Owens is a lovely woman, and I've checked out her Garden Rant blog, and I admire that she preaches being organic and not being consumerist about gardening. Great. But the voice she uses in this book is very difficult to like.

She starts out on the wrong foot, reporting her own foodie childhood with smug superiority, "In my childhood home there was no Wonder Bread, no Ragu, and no twinkies. There was only crusty bakery rye, homemade spaghetti sauce with meatballs full of garlic and fresh herbs, and pound cakes made from scratch" She later glowingly reports that, having been raised the same way, her own daughter refuses to eat processed turkey and would rather throw away a sandwich than eat such defiled food. Really? This is the sort of thing that is supposed to sell me on growing my own vegetables? It mostly just makes me exhausted thinking that now I'll lose time both in the garden AND in the kitchen, and my children will grow up to be brats.

In this particular book, the details Owens uses to elaborate "the good life" that her vegetable garden provides don't tend toward the "anyone could do this" sort.

She celebrates the garden of her friends Bob and Gerald, who not only own an 18th century farmhouse but also have "the subtlest, warmest, earthiest, and yet most elegant possible taste in furniture, decor, art and movies." She also admits to getting tips from her friend Martha, who used to run a fine restaurant but it "eventually convinced her an advanced degree in art history was called for." Yet Martha remains "a woman who makes her own paprika from her own peppers." Throughout the book Owens insists that gardening and the eating it allows (her) isn't an elitist thing. But this comes from a woman who spends a chunk of the book complaining about how hard it is for her to live in one house while her garden is at her vacation house. This makes moments like her bubbly aside that gardening will save you time spent in the grocery store seem um, somewhat less than credible. Owens gets her manure from her neighbor, who raises alpacas. She doesn't seem to have much to say about those of us who live disorganized, budget-strapped lives in the depressed suburbs of the midwest. Hard up for cash? she asks -- Cut down small saplings from your local forest for bean-poles. You DO remember that local forest you have, don't you?

Next spring I'll probably start small, planting potatoes, tomatoes and green beans. I probably won't be very good at it, and will be busy and distracted, and still eat things out of cans and frozen food boxes. I won't become a gourmet cook (something Owens seems to believe is an inevitable result of gardening) nor will I probably lose much weight (ditto). But I don't think Owens will have much bearing on my finally getting off my butt and digging.j