Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart   Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee    Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter |  Daily Gardener Community   Historical Events 1785 It was on this day that Noah Webster (books about this person) (of Webster's dictionary fame) boarded a little ship named George in Baltimore. When the ship stopped in Norfolk, Virginia, Noah ate some cherries for the very first time. He must have liked them because he later added cherry trees to his orchard. Noah Webster was a fierce gardener. He enjoyed his time in the garden, and he planted all kinds of vegetables, like parsnips, carrots, cucumbers, beets, and potatoes. In fact, in his dictionary, Noah Webster defined potatoes as, one of the cheapest and most nourishing vegetables. And then he got a little spiritual about the potato. Noah wrote, In the British dominions and in the United States, the potato has proved to be one of the greatest blessings bestowed on man by the Creator.   Noah Webster was also a fan of farming. He called farming, the most necessary, the most healthy, the most innocent, and the most agreeable employment of men.   Noah Webster had a property in Amhurst, and over the years, he gradually acquired the land around his property until he had around ten acres. On this land. Noah built a barn. He had a chaise house, and he also planted a magnificent garden. Everyone in Amhurst knew that Noah Webster's orchard was the best in the town. Noah grew pears. He had apple trees and peach trees - and even grew sweet white grapes,   1859 From The Diary of Calvin Fletcher, American attorney who became a prominent banker, farmer, and state senator in Indianapolis, Indiana This a beautiful day.  My early corn one foot high.  Early potatoes set for blossom.  Early tomatoes six and eight inches high.  Grapes in full blossom. Strawberrys Ditto.  Two messes of green peas.  The grass in the yard cut one week ago.  Raspberrys nearly full grown. Currants ditto former good size latter small.     1888 Birth of Henry Beston (books by this author), American writer and naturalist. Last week I discovered Henry Beston when I researched his wife, the writer, and poet, Elizabeth Coatsworth (books by this author). I have to say it was a thrill getting to know both of them. Henry is best remembered for his book The Outermost House (1928). Henry wrote the book during the year spent on the Great Beach of Cape Cod. He isolated himself in a house on the beach and devoted himself to writing about life along the shore. Henry wrote his book in longhand at a kitchen table. During this year, when Henry was sequestered in this house, he actually met his future wife, Elizabeth, at a garden party. Later on, when he proposed marriage to Elizabeth, She told him, "No book. No marriage". So that was an extra incentive for Henry to finish his book. Now Henry and Elizabeth went on to have two little girls.  Their daughter, Kate Barnes (books by this author), became a respected author and poet in her own right. Here's a little excerpt from her poem called Old Roses, which is about how her parents met. Kate wrote, When my father met my mother at a dinner party in a garden of very old roses on Beacon Hill one hot evening in early June, he said to his friend, F. Morton Smith, that night, "Morton, I have met the girl I'm going to marry!" (We have Uncle Morton's testimony for that, the certified word of a Boston lawyer.) My mother said my father had looked handsome, yes, and talked delightfully, but what she remembered were the mosquitoes. "If you stopped slapping at them, even for a second, you were eaten up alive."   Henry wrote many different books. Of course, most of them are about nature, but there was one garden book that caught my attention, and it's called Herbs and the Earth. And in this book, Henry wrote. A garden of herbs, is a garden of things loved for themselves in their wholeness and integrity. It is not a garden of flowers, but a garden of plant