I am reading and writing for the first time. My friend Jan reads you frequently. She is my garden mentor and I am her garden muscle.

I once thought about enclosing my south-facing front porch to make it a greenhouse. I have enough projects; it's good to have minimal plants in the winter so I can get some others done!

Martha has been a force for good, most of the time, but I liked her books and magazine better years ago. The day she was on the magazine cover wearing an $800 sweater, I decided to subscribe to something more practical. Still, her chocolate mousse recipe is the best!

In the interests of lowering my carb's I make my "pies" without crusts these days, except for special occasions. Apple and squash are the usuals. I can't bring myself to BUY pie crust, but I have never been very good at making it – too like cardboard.

Adeu from Connecticut,
Ellen

First, posting a rude attack anonymously is the devil's hand at work. Yes, frost does kill more then flowers, but your type of sour attitude also kill good intentions in the hearts of people. Matt tries very hard to keep everyone happy and is in constant conflict with how he should word articles. People like you make me wonder what happened to this world. If all you have to do is attack people un-needlessly, simply because you are jealous of his life. Perhaps you need to re-educate your own dreary life and leave him alone. Matt's Mom and her ironing of linens, was that she wanted things to look nice. My mom, handed me the iron and made me learn to do it at a very young age. She always said it was incase I should wish to take pride in my home. All I have to say to you, is I am his only domesticated helper and have been for 30 years or more. My biggest job around here is counting my pennies to pay for everything I do, because he spends all his money finding ways to keep all his readers educated and informed. So please think next time before judging.

Our 'cutting garden' was built by my mother in 1942 so that the church (our Lithuanian church) would have flowers. Peonies last a long time – and although it may bother you that we have one, destroying it in the name of ethical gardening doesn't really make sense either.

And me being apolitical? You really don't want me sharing my thoughts on GMO's and Monsanto! As for 'reactionary' or 'neutral' of course I try not to show what I really feel, but -sorry, I have trouble hiding it all sometimes. You are right though, my 'aesthetic' approach can be viewed as elitest – then again, I am a designer and as creative, it's hard to not sound elitest to some people. In reality, we creative types edit, curate and make opinionated decisions which generally are not popular with the masses. No one has to listen or agree with me. Believe me, there are enough blogs out there who deal with humanity, the politics of gardening, or the ethics of veggies and food.

As for kids, I admit, using the word 'ignorant' felt rough – but isn't it right? Even when I was in school, most kids didn't care about the same things I did – winter squashes, rare irruptions of winter finches or the first frost – they then, in 1977 were more concerned with smoking pot, rock music and fashion statements. Hey – if they LOVE what they are doing, great. But so few students today are able to discover what they might love, because they are not discovering nor exposed to science, or art, or developing passions of the mind and heart through music theory. As a teacher and an educator – I would love to hear your thoughts about that. Most gardeners can trace their passion back to a single incident – a plant which they grew, a grandparents garden, an aquarium they had as a child. How are students today discovering such passions? I wonder if you write such comments on sports blogs? What are your thoughts about the NFL and football, for example?

And you know what? I really think that some people really ARE missing out because they don't care about daffodils – (or Osmanthus fragrans for that matter.). Especially our young students.

Matt, you've always seemed fairly bright and, especially over the last year or so, increasingly conscious of your "personal brand," so I'd hazard to guess you're aware of how elitist and, frankly, detached this post must read to an average person. That should trouble you.

Speaking as someone who grew up foraging for their own food because in lean times to do otherwise would mean starvation, I don't recognize myself in your cheery and comfortable New-stalgia — all faerie lights and fruit cider and big, roaring fireplaces — and that's okay, of course. Not everyone would find the prospect of harvesting their own food an ambition to be realized; that may be because, like so many people, they are only a generation or two, if that, removed from agricultural labor themselves, the realities were not nearly so romantic.

But I know you are positioning yourself as an educator, and the contempt you express, not just for your bogstandard Martha Stewart fan (middle class white Americans with a good amount of time on their hands to engage in meaningless craft projects), but for genuinely working class people, and their children, is surprising and offputting in the extreme. Your yearning for an authenticity Stewart cannot bring to her own brand is palpable, but the idealization of "authentic" experiences is, in itself, a privileged position, one that be adopted only because your own basic needs are already met.

Please understand that your mother cleaning her "own linens," while a minor task that might seem noble in the extreme to you, is a prospect most people cannot fathom; owning linens (a greenhouse, property enough for cutting beds and staging shows) implies fortune enough for a cupboard to put them in. I suppose in mentioning it, you are trying to communicate that your family didn't bring "help" in to do their daily tasks. Well, bully for you, Matt.

The fellow educator in me is disturbed by how casually you heap stereotypes and classist tropes onto your neighbor's children, with their "hoodies" and video games. Your distaste for popular culture — distinct, mind you, from knowledge of it, which in your case seems vast — and your willingness to describe perfect strangers as "ignorant" (seasons pass them by, yet they shiver at the bus stop) because your toys and hobbies are not their own does not endear one to your cause. I wouldn't allow someone with this attitude come within several miles of my students, however earnest they were about imposing "new experiences" on them. You are a (sometimes quite infectious) enthusiast, but that does not mean your fancies and your pet interests are inarguably compulsory, lest one be readily dismissed to merely plebeian status.

Unlike many of your contemporaries, the politics of ethical gardening, ethical eating, of environmentally conscious behavior (except where it appeals to you aesthetically), have largely passed you by, it seems. Adopting an apolitical guise does not make you neutral, Matt. You seem more like a reactionary here. It's sad to learn that a fellow plantsman takes such a dim view of the rest of humanity because they didn't inherit a plot of land. Recognizing heirloom varieties does not lighten one's soul. It is, in itself, not a worthy cause. No one is "missing out" because they don't care about daffodils.

Frosts kill more than flowers.