Spring is on its way ...

How do I know this? Well, I have been receiving seed catalogs in the mail and that means it's time to start planning the garden. When I see the snow covered garden beds as I gaze across the lawn towards the river, I visualize the cloves of garlic under a blanket of snow. I remember planting them in October on a cold and snowy day, just before the ground permanently froze.

O lovely seed catalogs. Remember the Sears wish book of long ago. Today it has been replaced by online shopping. How we waited and waited for that catalog to come in the mail. How we poured over pages of toys we never received. But the anticipation of it all was so much more rewarding than ownership.

These days that wish book has been replaced by seed catalogs. Totally Tomatoes won out this year as being the first in my mail box. I took advantage of Prairie Road Organics Small Business Saturday offer and ordered my first batch (of many, I'm sure) seeds.

Oh, yeah, I have limited garden space, but always unlimited imagination when it comes to growing heirloom and unusual varieties of seed. I'm really trying to keep it down to what sells well at the farmers market.

It's been so gray the past few weeks, I wonder what phase the moon has entered. This is the time of year it creeps across our quilts at night and disappears into the trees to the west. Once the clouds clear, it may also bring the cold of deep winter. So just for fun:
Here's a poem I memorized when I was in the memorization stage of my life...
"I heard a bird sing in the deep of December,
A beautiful thing
And sweet to remember
We're closer to spring
than we were in September
Sang a beautiful bird
in the deep of December."
That's probably not entirely correct, but it's close.

And, hey, if you need seed advice, just leave me some questions in the comments section. I would be happy to influence your purchasing decisions.

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