a week of real winter

Since last Friday we have seen the first night below 20 degrees, a first snowfall, and the first seed catalog in the mail...It feels like January already.  Last Saturday's inch-plus of wet fluff broke a limb on one of my adolescent wax myrtles.  A chunk of ice shattered my rain gauge.  My roses are probably done and my spring bulbs are finally planted. So now I am taking notes on what to do next year.

Speaking of next year, I got the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds Catalog in the mail on Tuesday and it is filled with lusciousness.....pulling names at random from its glossy pages, you could find things like the Knife River Squash, originally cultivated by Native American tribes from present day North Dakota;  a watermelon developed by Mississippi State University in 1965; and the "Spanish Mammoth" sweet pepper which was (according to the authors) shipped to Paris markets in the 1880s from Algeria and Valencia.  Oh, and if that is too Western Civ. for you, then you could cash out for Christmas on dozens of Pan-Asian antiques. I have my eye on a Japanese pumpkin developed in the Edo period (1804-1818).  I don't know where the hell I could plant 1/100th of all the good stuff but I am excited to read and dream. 

If you are interested in the heirloom, the unique, the rare, and the organic seeds that you can't find in local stores, then other catalogs I would recommend are:
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, High Mowing Organic Seeds, and Seed Savers Exchange.

eye candy from the 2010 Baker's Creek catalog