Catalog Stories

 

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We of a certain age remember (print) catalog shopping, beginning with the venerable Sears Catalog that once sat in homes all across America. "Wish books" folks called them. I remember the excitement when the Christmas catalog arrived from Sears. I could hardly wait to get hold of that, to search for toys that I wanted "Santa" to bring me. 

Things got complicated during the 60's when all sorts of catalogs, ones for clothes and for household goods and just about everything else you can imagine, arrived at the same time, the back-breaking bane of postal carriers' lives. But I want to talk about some advice my mother-in-law gave me, back when my husband and I were married students, with spare change for entertainment in short supply. She advised, from her own experience, that one of the easiest ways to get some no-cost reading material was to subscribe to seed catalogs. I found addresses for many within the pages of that required reading for New Englanders, The Old Farmers Almanac. 

"Catalogs are free and come in the winter," she said, "and they are filled with color pictures that will cheer you up and remind you that summer will come again." In Massachusetts, back in the 1960's, this was good mental health advice, which I took. Ever since then, January (even, now, December!) brings me catalogs, although at first I didn't even have a plot large enough for a tomato.

I was, however, just as my mother-in-law was, raised by people who gardened. Many people of that generation were not too far away from genuine farming. During the Depression, among some social classes, turning your yard into food was a life-supporting practice. That was the era of the backyard chicken, before we all had to pretend to be Louis XIV. 

Living in a rental property, I began raising -- you guessed it -- tomatoes -- in an abandoned flower bed. I dug up a corner with an old coal shovel I'd found near the oil burner in the basement. Fresh tomatoes were an inducement, and the seed catalogs were an inspiration for what else might be coaxed from the soil. From then on, spring time meant gardening.  

Messy late year garden

I've had some large gardens in my time, gardens that fed us through summers with tomatoes, carrots, beans, beets and melons, squashes, (winter and summer) as well as lettuces, herbs and spinach. Husband, kids and I learned to enjoy greens of all kinds. "Greens" is a large topic I'm still exploring. This year, when it warms a bit, I will try to grow Callaloo, which I first enjoyed years ago in the West Indies as soup, cooked up in a rich yard-chicken stock. 

I decided last year that in my limited box-garden space I would plant mostly greens. This year, I have some seed "cabbage-collards" already started in the house and lettuce and beets in the ground--fingers crossed because of the on-going Weather Weirding. Our year started with heat and drought during the first three months. Now, when it should be warm, it has reverted to March/April chill. At least, it's begun to rain...

My catalog choices are wider now, thanks to the internet and the advice of granddaughter Rachel who lives and gardens in GA. Southern seed catalogs have become my go-to, and lately I've had more success with these. This is because here, on the upper end of the Atlantic Coastal Plain, summers were always hot and humid, but now they are 100+ scorching, the way they are in the deep South. Over the years, I've switched from the big time seed suppliers to the little guys, who often have heritage and rare seeds. This sometimes leads to disaster--diseases and plant-chewing insects are fiercer than they ever were, thanks to over-use of pesticides and so many invasive viruses/ species entering this hemisphere. 

I have learned there is an Insect Apocalypse going on in tandem with all the others--just ask the pollinators, cicadas and fireflies if you don't believe me--but the die-off doesn't seem to be affecting garden pests. A new project just begun is my attempt to grow host plants for birds and the "Good" Bugs, which has meant a whole other set of catalogs in which to browse the bright images and dream. For me, catalogs are still wish books.   :)

(And Happy Birthday to Fraulein Gottlieb, too, today. Soon, she dances in the May with her Lover!)

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~~Juliet Waldron