It’s said that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. But we’re not focused on lions or lambs right now. We’re wildly finishing up seed and tree orders for the year. We’re late (as usual) but one feature still makes it fun – seed catalogs. These magazines are to gardeners what cooking shows are to eaters. They are visual gold. Their pages promise a perfect garden, big enough to feed twenty with dead straight rows, no weeds and unfailing light rains every three or four days.
The catalogs are full of practical advice, but they sell dreams too.
This year’s garden will have five varieties of tomatoes and three kinds of beets. But this year, we won’t plant 50 squash plants. However, we just might buy a packet of seeds for those giant pumpkins. We will get a ready supply of horse manure from the neighbors. As long as it’s still March, I can convince myself that I will diligently feed and water the plants and I will register the best of the yield for the County Fair. In May, after the catalogs are gone and the weeds are rallying, it will be a different world. But right now, it’s March.
