Seed Catalogs

December 31; I wake up, look around the house at the debris of a week at home, interspersed with days at my part-time job. (I am on vacation from my full-time job.) Living with seventeen cats and two dogs means that every day is housekeeping day. While my renter/room mate will clean, he and I have a very different idea of what constitutes “clean”. New Year’s Eve…the day my childhood family traditionally took down the Christmas tree and other holiday decorations, the day for New Year’s resolutions. It was also the season when new seed catalogs began making their way through the mail.

Seed catalogs were/are like a beacon promising spring in the gray depths of winter. Some are line drawings, some newsprint color, some bright and glossy like the best of magazines. They detail such things as: “…grows best in shade, providing abundant foliage…” or “needs full sun”. I feel as if I need “full sun”, trapped as I am by year-end bills, the ever-present household chores, and the short, gray days of winter. Seed catalogs are a printed promise that winter does not last forever.

When I was growing up, we received two main catalogs: Henry Field’s and Guerney’s. Henry Field’s was our primary seed provider; not as colorful as Guerney’s, it pictured a wealth of garden vegetables, ornamental trees and shrubs, and an abundance of flowers. Guerney’s was not as often used, but it had beautiful catalogs that included some varieties not offered in Field’s. As the new catalogs arrived, I was given the old ones to cut up and paste into my own “gardens” on the back of a flattened out paper grocery sack. New issues of Sears and Montgomery Wards mail order catalogs meant I also had new sources of paper dolls to “work” in my paper gardens.

As an adult, struggling with the budget that never seemed/seems to meet all my needs, gardening broadened into relief for the grocery allowance, an excuse to get outside and get some exercise, and the promise that winter fuel bills, taxes, and all the other ills of winter would, indeed, give way to spring. Although I hated weeding the garden as a child, as an adult tending plants has become a way of connecting with my world. In my initial enthusiasm as a young woman, I requested (and received) far more seed catalogs than I could possibly use. As the years of gardening have accumulated, I have winnowed my catalog selection down to a few: Henry Field’s remains an excellent place to get basic garden staples; Burpee and Guerney’s are still favorites for looking at the beautiful, glossy pictures-and for ordering the occasional seed packet that stands out from the run-of-the-mill vegetable selection. My favorite catalog, however, started as a line-drawing, almost pamphlet format: Nichols Rare Herbs and Seeds. Looking through it’s pages is like stepping into an earlier time, when medicines, scents, soaps and other needs frequently started in the cottage garden just behind the house. Unpacking a box of garden “goodies” from Nichols is an olfactory adventure, as aromas of herbs and spices arise from the organic packing they use for their plants and from the plants themselves.

In recent years, there has been no need to wait for a catalog to arrive in the mail. Although it cuts down on “recycling” the old catalogs as art projects, having a variety of seed source options online has been a delight. The cobwebs, bills, kitty “surprises”, the kitchen cleaner box the puppy chewed up all over the dining room, the project for school, even the on-line games that usually provide entertainment, all are thrown into the shade by the promise of spring to come. Don’t take my word for it: Just type “seed catalogs” into the search bar of your favorite web browser, sit back and enjoy!