Seed Catalogs

Hubby and I enjoyed watching the NFL Pro Bowl last night. We enjoyed their new format of choosing teams, rather than playing NFC vs. AFC. It was a lot more competitive than the past few games have been, even though you had teammates playing against one another. I think some of the defensive players enjoyed tackling their professional teammates a little too much!

We had another very nice weekend – followed by another frigid day. And we've had more wind. Honestly, this winter cannot end soon enough. When there's a 40 degree difference from one day to the next, that can't be healthy for us. The wind last night was ferocious. The wind chill has stayed in single digits (and a good bit below zero) today.

It's been several years since I was on the mailing list for seed catalogs, but this is the time of year they normally arrive in the mail – once the holidays are over and winter sets in, you check the mailbox and find this colorful harbinger of spring.

If you haven't gardened or ever seen a seed catalog, I think you've missed out on something wonderful. It was such a relief from winter weather to go through the seed catalogs cover to cover, to see the bright vivid colors of the fruits and vegetables, and to think about the warm sunshine of planting time in the spring.

It was a learning experience to go through the catalogs and see what new items had been developed. One of my favorite were the purple beans. They tasted the same as green beans, but they were more tender and could grow much larger than green beans. And when you put them in hot water – they turned green! Who knew. I still haven't figured out the changing color thing, but the kids always thought it was fun to watch them.

I rarely ordered anything from the seed catalogs, but they were a good resource for me as I planned my annual gardens. I could flip through the pages as I plotted my rows and hills and make sure I didn't forget anything. Sadly, though, it was usually more expensive to order through the seed catalogs than it was to buy locally.

Once I figured out what I wanted to plant, I could make a list and start buying seeds – again, I didn't want to forget anything. Usually I would get the seeds planted first, then add the tiny plants a little later. Every year, I loved the process of watching the seeds and tiny plants grow and produce food in such a short amount of time.

Of course, the reality always was that weeds would grow even faster than my plants. Hoeing is a backbreaking job, but it's a necessity for a good garden. Once the first plants started producing, checking the garden and picking the ripe food was an every-day occurrence that usually continued through the first heavy frost. Some days I would look at everything brought in from the garden and wonder how in the world everything would get used while it was fresh. And the canning and freezing marathon would start. Even then, it was sometimes difficult to keep up with everything. I still hate to throw out food that I haven't been able to use.

I have a lot of memories of gardening when I was a kid on the farm. It was “all hands on deck” when Dad plowed up the garden in the spring......meaning I was always drafted to help he and Mom plant the garden. We always had our “natural” fertilizer from the barn lot, thanks to the resident cows. I usually helped out with the hoeing and with the harvesting. The okra always made me itch – when I was grown and had my own garden, I had to resort to wearing a long-sleeved shirt and gloves to harvest it, regardless of the heat. Toward the end of harvest would be the potatoes, and we all helped out. I can still remember the backache I would have after a day of picking up potatoes.