IT'S PLANTING TIME

Well the snow is about to the window sills and the seed catalogs are starting to pile up so I know it is time to plant. That's right you heard me. It's time to sow the seeds in my imaginary garden. It's the garden that is planted every year from the comfort of my big overstuffed burgundy LazyBoy recliner. In this garden I order all the seeds I want from the multitude of beautiful pictures in the catalogs. No concerns for how I am going to plant them all or where!  Not to mention how I am going to pay for them. Millions of them and they are sown with almost 100 % germination. No damping off disease there. No blown bulbs on the seed lights. No failed germination. They all come up.

And Spring comes around on exactly the scheduled day. And suddenly there is warmth and the perfect soil temperature and weather conditions to plant all my plants. No record setting torrential rainfall and record low temperatures. No hail to beat them down, no gale force winds to beat them to death, no cut worms to gnaw them off even with the ground and NO RABBITS.

 In this garden there are no sore backs or blistered hands. I always have on beautiful new garden gloves with perfectly manicured nails. In this beautiful garden there are no weeds to pull, no aphids or cabbage worms, no ground hogs, no deer and did I mention NO RABBITS.

All the vegetables blossom, set fruit and ripen just when they are supposed to. Just like those beautiful pictures in those catalogs. No coons eating the corn. No guineas pecking the tomatoes and no tomato horn worms.  The carrots actually make roots and those bush sweet potatoes are actually bushes and not 100 foot vines. Those red zinnias are actually red and not yellow and those peppers that are supposed to be mild are not so hot they are inedible.

This is about the time that I wake up. Usually from O Wise One snoring in the matching burgundy LazyBoy recliner next door.

And after all these dreams I realize that if all this were to happen I would probably quit gardening just from the shock of it all. I think after half a century of me against nature  it would actually become boring. Except maybe for those #@!* RABBITS !!!!

So I will continue to peruse those seed catalogs for at least a couple more weeks and dream of blossoms of the past. I shall research , compare, covet and memorize and in the end I shall come back to reality. I shall admit I am not as young as I used to be. I shall resign myself to only plant what I can keep weeded, watered and tended. I shall only plant what we can eat fresh, can and preserve and give away to our neighbors without totally alienating them. (There have been years when they no longer opened their doors. That's when you put it in their cars! )  As for those new garden gloves and manicured nails. GET A GRIP LADIES !

By the way anyone care for some fried rabbit ? : )

HAPPY WINTER GARDENING

The Canned Quilter

“From December to March,

there are for many of us three gardens:

the garden outdoors,

the garden of pots and bowls in the house,

and the garden of the mind’s eye.”

- Katherine S. White