November 14, 2022 Cream Hill, Xavier Bichat, Henri Dutrochet, Astrid Lindgren, Harrison Salisbury, The Heirloom Gardener by John Forti, and Robert Buist

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Historical Events
1771 Birth of Xavier Bichat ("bee'shah"), French anatomist and pathologist.
Remembered as the father of modern histology, or the study of tissues. In his work, Xavier did not use a microscope and still discovered 21 distinct types of tissues in the human body. His work accelerated and transformed the way doctors understood disease.
Sadly, Xavier died accidentally in his early thirties in 1802 after falling down the steps of his hospital. Today, Xavier Bichat's name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.
A lover of nature, Xavier's work was grounded in observations from the natural world. Charles Darwin quoted Xavier in his book The Descent of Man.
The great botanist Bichat long ago said, if everyone were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. 
If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de' Medici, we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characteristics in our women a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.
 
The beauty of nature and the secret to that beauty is in nature's diversity and the ephemeral nature of all things - the seasons, flowers, the weather, etc.,
Xavier also wrote,
Life is the sum of forces resisting death.
 
1776 Birth of Henri Dutrochet, French physician, botanist, and physiologist.
After studying the movement of sap in plants in his home laboratory, Henri discovered and named osmosis. Henri shared his discovery with the Paris Academy of Sciences on October 30th, 1826.
Like the cells in our human bodies, plants don't drink water; they absorb it through osmosis.
Henri also figured out that a plant's green pigment, chlorophyll, is essential to how plants take up carbon dioxide. Hence, photosynthesis could not happen without chlorophyll. It turns out chlorophyll helps plants gather energy from light. And if you've ever asked yourself why plants are green, the answer is chlorophyll. Since it reflects green light, chlorophyll makes the plant appear green.
As for Henri, he was a true pioneer in plant research. He was the first to examine plant respiration, light sensitivity, and geotropism (How the plant responds to gravity, i.e., roots grow down to the ground.)
Geotropism can be confusing at first, but I think of it this way: The upward growth of plants - fighting against gravity - is called negative geotropism, and the downward growth of roots, growing with gravity, is called positive geotropism.
And there's a tiny part of the plant at the very end of the roo