I’ve gotta special place for a good seed catalogue, the way a high school gal can’t wait to get her hands on a copy of Cosmo. Each page, so provocatively laid out, entices my summer senses. I fantasize about pumpkins, not your average pumpkin, but the huge ones, with deep colour, beautiful skin, and the ability to be mounted. Ahhh how I dream of growing Giant Atlantic Pumpkins large enough for my kids to be able to climb. Yes, I’m referring to pumpkins and only pumpkins.     Every year I struggle to keep my gardening plans realistic. Being a dreamer, I could easily plan where the greenhouse will be, how I’ll recreate the flower gardens that my great-aunt once doted over, and I can already hear the sound of the dump truck backing up to unload my entire savings worth of black gold, and then my loving, careful partner, reminds me of everything else I’ll be tackling, and I remember the issue of the deer, and I float down from my cloud of garden- la-la- land, and begin to make lists instead. Last year’s garden was the smallest I’ve ever taken on, but it was the most enjoyable and the most bountiful, except for that year of 72 tomato plants, although that was more bounty than pleasure.Welcome to the jungle, We’ve got fun and tomatoes. 

This year, I’ll be working with some seeds that I saved from last year’s produce, some that I ‘borrowed’ from places we visited…okay so I occasionally sneak the dead heads off of beautiful flowers from a garden I may be passing (probably not something you should tell my kids), not to mention, the stash that didn’t make it into the soil last May. I’ll need to order some of the staples such as tomatoes, which I think I’ve managed to locate through a local gardening mama. In an age where folks are so hurried and often disconnected, sharing something as simple as a seed is a great reminder that when one of us is prosperous, we can all benefit. It all comes from just one tiny seed,that is, unless it takes three whole packets to sprout a single carrot, but I certainly have never experienced that! Nope, not once. I’m needing some herbs to replenish what we’ve used for medicine this winter, and I’m currently searching for a recipe to make our own multi-vitamin, so I’ll have to nail that down before I can make our order official. If anyone has any tried and true recipes, this mama would love the advice.

Many more tales of gardening to come,

HayMama

xo