Everything looks so great in the Gurney's seed catalog. The cabbages are huge. The carrots orange and slender. The sunflowers are 12 feet tall. The pumpkins, the beets, the squash, the peas in the pod, the potatoes, the angel trumpet vines, the black eyes susans, the hardy lavender, and the ostrich plume ferns - they all look fantastic. Will my garden compare to these photographically enhanced beauties? No, of course not. But that doesn't stop me from dreaming and planning and scheming and imagining. I think the value of the Gurney's catalog is in the imagining. Imagining being able to dig in the dirt and smell the richness in your hands as you squeeze the soil aside to make room for the tiny seeds that will, one day, grow up to be a 12 foot tall sunflower. Imagining that the deer will not invade your garden and nip off every sunflower plant when they're about a foot tall. Imagining the taste of that first tomato as you pop it into your mouth and the seeds burst against the back of your teeth. Imagine warm sunshine, birds singing, puffy white clouds forming shapes in the sky, and the sore hamstrings you get from working in the garden all day. I love my Gurney's catalog because it seeds imagination into my wintery brain.
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