Winter is long and getting longer, after a brief warm up we are going back into the icy teeth of winter, but this time with a difference, the seed catalogs are here, and there are decisions to be made.
Even more than the crashing icicles that hung like overgrown stalactites from the eves, even more that the dwindling wood pile and the need to refill the coal bin, even more than the motion of the earth causing the rainbows cast by the prisms hung in the kitchen window to shine deeper into the house , the first sign of spring has arrived, in the form of seed catalogs.
From somewhere in the depths of my memory is the picture of a group of gardeners sitting around the kitchen table drinking coffee and debating the merits of various new and familiar seeds, while outside icy winds blew through the still standing canes on which brussel sprouts once grew and the heads of spent golden rod bobbed along the fences, the once mighty, towering stalks of jerusalem artichokes crumpled and broken marked the spot where one of the first sampling of home grown goodness could be found. An image that warms me even in the presence of icy drafts from under the door.
I think that the makers of these catalogs know that the images they use evoke a peaceful feeling of a times past when life was very different. A time I have vague recollections of that time, and if your garden failed, you would have to spend your hard earned dollars at the grocery store. But I love those images anyway. Conjuring up rows and rows of home canned tomatoes, beans, pumpkin, berries, apples and, in some years potatoes.
Here begins my gardening year, an idea in growing now only in my mind.
"A seed is a plant in a box with it's lunch"-Last Whole Earth Catalog
