The arrival of Spring

[RBH]

Does anyone else mark the closeness of spring by the arrival of the seed catalogs?

Man, I have to say I do... I have already recieved about 10 so far!
I love looking at them while the outside is cold.... just thinking about the warm summer to come.

 

[Imahomer]

I haven't gotten a seed catalog in years and years and years.

 

[HatMagnet]

Does anyone else mark the closeness of spring by the arrival of the seed catalogs?

Man, I have to say I do... I have already recieved about 10 so far!
I love looking at them while the outside is cold.... just thinking about the warm summer to come.

We've been getting them on a daily basis. My wife is starting to plan her garden already. That means lotsa' work for me.

 

[dhermann1]

You have to read "Onward and Upward in the Garden", by Katharine S. White. She was the wife of E.B. White of Charlotte's Web and The Elements of Style fame. She was an editor at the New Yorker Magazine for many years, and started contributing little commentaries on gardening from time to time. Eventually these were gathered into a wonderful book, which has become a classic of gardening literature, "Onward and Upward in the Garden."
Her very first chapter discusses the joys of receiving gardening catalogs deep in January, when the snow covers the ground.
After 18 years with a small patch of back yard, I now no longer have a garden and it KILLS me (except on the first day of every month ). But I used to love the annual catalog orgy. Among my favorites were White Flower Farm and Dutch Gardens Bulbs. Last fall was the first fall since 1990 that I didn't plant any spring bulbs. Sigh . . . . . .

 

[HungaryTom]

Rusty,

First Snowdrops (Galanthus spp.) begun to rear their heads in our garden -first sign of the arriving spring- due to the weeks of relatively mild weather in December over here.
Now it is cold 'real' winter in the Carpathian basin, but when the old ladies begun to sell the blossoming Snowdrop specimens in January it was already a sign of hope. No more since the selling is forbidden - too many were picked from the forests.

Tom

 

[shortbow]

I'm more of a hunter-gatherer than gardener, what gets me through the winter is that the days after equinox grow daily longer.

I would like to be a gardner, but those genes just went by me somewhere. What I find intriguing about it, is that folks get that intense and focused connection with Mother Nature in one small place. Simplicity, beauty, the rythm of the seasons, a Zen like one thing, one place, one time here nowness.

Anyhowlol