Garden Catalogue Month

The Border Garden, 2 winters ago. It is amazing how much bigger it ahs all become!

So, it is garden catalogue time. I think January might be the official month of the garden catalogue, as December is the month of the everyconcievablecatalogue. This is the month in which you sit in front of the roaring fire while the wind howls outside, and your garden gives up with shivering and just plain ol' goes to sleep. Well, I suppose the zone fortunate, in the lower half of our country can still do some gardening here and there. But here in the great white, (which isn't white atall atall) it just isn't done. My neighbor was able to pull and can some beets right into December, which he then presented to me as a wonderful Christmas present of bounty, but mostly, gardeners are sitting next to the idyllic fire with their catalogues, dreaming of what will be.
And, I am most easily seduced. I love the nostalgic vintage drawings in the Shumways catalogue, violets and seed packets, and hand pushed garden tillers. The thick, large rectangle of the Jung Seeds Catalogue  with veggie choices like Danish Ballhead Cabbage and Lutz Green Leaf Beets, herbs and seductive sentences like "Enjoy all-summer color from this fragrant reblooming lilac!" and names like "Rasberry Truffle Echinacea".  The Johnny Seeds is my favorite. I have the best luck with their products, and so hang back from looking at that one. Because when I get to Johnny's, then I actually end up planning. Which is ever so much more work than dreaming.
Brent and Becky's Bulbs. Again, planted with great success in the past, this catalogue is a dreaming one, because I rarely spring for the investment it takes for a show with Brent and Becky. I tend to dabble around the edges, purchasing bulbs from Lowe's, and then noticing that 80% never peek up in the spring. Every few years I get disgusted and order a large whack of amazing bulbs that then perform for years. And it is good.
The problem is that all this lying about in front of the fire lands me in the same place; with a new garden being born in about 5 months. I need to use garden birth control in January. I start dreaming, and before I know it, Oops, I've done it again. But like other births, the new ones aren't the only ones needing attention. The weeding, trimming, clipping, fertilizing, bug picking, mulching, staking all need to be done for my older babies as well. The Beans need a new trellis this year, and don't get me started on the cost of proper cages for the Tomatoes! The border garden needs to have rearranging done, and I have allowed my Zephrine Drouhin Climbing Rose to get completely out of control. I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with her when I have a young'un all ready to be dug and planted.
So, this year, I am going to attempt to limit myself to a rehabilitation, and no new beds. The rehabilitation effort is aimed at the northeast bed of the Anniversary Garden. It is thus named, as the previous homeowners had this garden designed and constructed as an Anniversary present. It has morphed here and there since we moved to Cowfeathers, but that particular quadrant has not had much fussing done. I have put some herbs in it, but mostly I have let it be. It had a somewhat anemic buddhelia, but mostly had become a bed of hardy purple echinicea- with one lavendar too elderly to be beautiful.  Until about 3 years ago, when I started noticing what I call "bind weed" popping up here and there in that bed. This particular weed has my number. I have no clue how to get rid of it. and as it choked most everything out last year, I finally gave up and pulled everything out of that garden, save for the boxwoods that anchor the space. Now, I couldn't face having a totally naked quadrant, so Brent and Becky helped me out, along with Youngest. He dug the holes and in went a whole passel of tulips, and a few giant alliums. Those will come up in the spring, and then, the possibilities are endless! I will concentrate all my dreaming on this one quadrant. That and the veggie gardens....
Control.
Control.

The Anniversary Garden in winter.