Seed Catalog

Today is dreary. Not just the weather, but my mood as well. I spent the day at work worrying about the lack of funding for my pet project and looking out the window at a dust covered landscape. And then, along came a seed catalog.

My dismal day was quickly replaced by visions of my beautiful kitchen garden in the spring. I visualized my raised beds and containers brimming with onions, lettuce, tomatoes, squash, eggplant, peppers and red kale; tall stems of okra and trellised cucumbers lording over it all. On the ground I see my vining crops – spaghetti squash, pumpkins, watermelon and cantaloupe. On the fence I’ll grow gourds and purple hyacinth beans. There are no bugs, no weeds and no triple digit temperatures in my seed catalog-daydream. I don’t forget to water, I don’t get attacked by mosquitoes, and I’m not sick to death of zucchini (yet).

I can almost smell the rich earthy compost, the heady scent of garlic, and the fragrance each herb releases as I brush by.

Will I grow bush beans or pole beans or maybe even golden wax beans? Will this be the year I finally grow the moon and star watermelon, the yard-long beans, crimson okra, arugula? I see myself walking through the garden with a basket over one arm collecting my dinner ingredients. Beautiful, vine-ripened, luscious tomatoes, a little basil, an eggplant, a red and green bell pepper and I have a divine pasta sauce. Some lettuce, a cucumber, some mint and I have a cool summer salad. Green beans, an onion and a little rosemary and I have a side dish. Is that the scent of homemade bread I smell wafting from the kitchen window? (It’s a daydream, remember?) I can’t wait to get in the kitchen with my fresh produce, open a bottle of wine, and start cooking.

With all of this bounty my thoughts turn to canning, or “putting food by” as my Maw Maw used to say. Jars of tomatoes, salsa, and spaghetti sauce sharing space with pickles, chow-chow, pickled okra, and specialty chutneys float before my eyes. The hot summer kitchen and all the work this entails are not in the picture today.

Seed catalogs are made for optimists. In spite of my bad day at work I am an optimist after all. If I can believe in the Eden-like garden I have created in my mind, then surely I can believe my pet work project will find funding.