Ruminations on garden catalogs

I am sick to death of winter. I was lulled into not hating winter by the relatively balmy December and January. But then came February with its arctic blasts. So, on this March 1st, I am ready for green growing things.

I, like you, receive upteen garden catalogs starting around Christmas. This year, I decided that I was not going to even look at them becasue all of the beds need to be reworked. It's the need versus want thing. So I made a critical error in judgement and recycled all of my garden catalogs. Not a Burpee in the house.

Well, I now find that even without ordering from them, I need them as reminders of the promise of Spring. I need to revel in the purples, yellows, oranges and reds on cold nights as the wind howls around the house. I need to dream of new yellow lilacs and white forsythia. I need to discuss plant varieties with my family.

While I am a flower grower and my sister is a vegetable grower, because we get the same catalogs, we can flip back and forth between them as we discuss the merits of zone 5 versus zone 4 gardening, sun versus shade and the latest techniques for keeping critters out. She kept her catalogs and is busily ordering her seeds with a long vision into the harvest. She will have pointy green caulifower, white tomatoes, yellow carrots and purple potatoes. And, of course, she always grows Bloody Butcher. She has an amazing green thumb and the patience to start all of her plants from seed. Patience is not my virtue. I go to the local nursery or order from catalogs....and await the box of veggies that will be coming to my house from the flatland.