Jim Bradshaw: Seed catalogs lure us into winter dreams

One hot day summer day some years ago I was pulling weeds along a row of tomato plants, when the realization came to me that I was crawling down garden rows to cultivate vegetables that we would mostly give to friends and neighbors who also grew more veggies than they would eat and were planning on giving some to me.
Since then I have kept a modest garden, a couple of raised beds that are easy on the back and knees and big enough to grow everything we want and need.
But I still go a little crazy this time of year when the seed catalogs fill the mailbox.
I’m still on the mailing list for a dozen or more seedsmen, and practically every one of their catalogs offers a new variety of something that I think I really need to try.
Before I know it, I’ve marked page after picture-laden page of tempting varieties, until I remember that weedy summer’s epiphany moment and ask myself hard questions like “where do you plan to plant all of this stuff?” and “who’s going to tend it?” and, the clincher, “who’s going to eat it all?”
But the catalogs do still entice the recurring dream of a garden as perfect as the ones in their pictures, with cascades of never-ending bloom, each plant superbly placed and grown, with no weeds, no bugs, no bare spots, no mistakes.
It’s only taken me seventy-plus years to finally catch on that this January dream and the reality of July are far different things.
After all these decades of weeding and hoeing and cussing and praying, I’ve figured out that it is highly unlikely that the plants that sprout in my beds will even faintly resemble the flashy pictures in the catalogs.
But the catalogs are still high on the list of my favorite January reading. I see a bit of a moral buried in the high hopes that the catalogs bring, just at the time when we are changing our calendars and making promises to ourselves about how this will be a different year in our lives as well as our gardens: Think big, aim high, but keep your feet on the ground.
A wiser man than I am once told me, “You have got to love your garden whether you like it or not.”
That’s hard to do in August.  In the summer, I identify more with the words of a cousin who once told me, “Only God can make a tree. I’m in charge of weeds.”
I’ve kept a garden notebook for many years, noting what I planted and now it did, listing chores that need to be done each month — when to plant this, fertilize that,  cultivate the other.
It is sprinkled throughout with bits and pieces of earthy philosophy, including this advice:
“Hold firm to your beliefs and, like your garden, your roots will grow strong and deep and weather all storms.”
That, I think, is just about as good a new year resolution as I can make.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters," is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.