THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 8, 1995 TAG: 9501060217
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Ron Speer
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
Dreams come easy at this time of year - easy and cheap.
All you have to do is open your mailbox and they come tumbling off the pages of seed company catalogs.
And suddenly it's spring and it's warm and my thumb is as green as a sprig of mint.
The catalogs arrive earlier and earlier each year, it seems. At my house four different seed companies have already bypassed the cruel days of winter, and convinced me that once again I'm a man of the soil.
One of them has sweetened the dream with cold cash. Well, the promise of cold cash - or after reading the fine print, the promise of a long-shot possibility of maybe at least a slim chance to win some sort of a prize.
The $100,000 jackpot would be nice, but when I want to dream about sudden wealth I go to Chesapeake and buy tickets in the Virginia lottery, where the odds are even worse but the payoff can be breathtaking.
So I've thrown away the Michigan Bulb Company's pamphlets about easy money, and have focused my dreams on flowers and vegetables and fruit that only a man or woman blessed by nature can produce.
And there's no gardener's dreams like those of a man facing his first spring in his house.
There are nooks and crannies everywhere in the yard crying out for color or cover, or perfectly shaded for a variety of plants, even though Becky left loads of flowers and shrubs and bushes when she turned the place over to us last fall.
Grapes would make a nice border, but the birds can be tough to beat. Maybe blackberries would be better. That new blueberry might be a nice addition.
Ah, the options are endless. I especially like drooling over the flowers, which in the catalogs are bright and sturdy and perfect.
Open Guerney's Seed and Nursery catalogue and jumping out, begging to be a part of your environment, are carnations, primrose, candytuft, gold alyssum, verbena, pansies, dragon's blood sedum, silver mound, lavender, coreopsis, aster, butterfly plant, columbine, canterbury bells, pincushions, gerbera, statice, sweet William, coral bells, bluebells, coneflower, and my favorite names of nature, hens and chicks and baby's breath.
That's just one page of choices in the 64-page wish book.
Check out the fruit and vegetables in Miller Nurseries' planting guide. The first page tempts you with grapes, kiwi, paw paw, asparagus, cherries and walnuts. Pears and peaches cry out from inside pages, along with apples, raspberries, nectarines, pink gooseberries, apricots and plums. Let it be noted that the plums ``are as big as hen eggs.''
The most tempting offerings of all are the strawberries, and Henry Fields Seed and Nursery Co. lets you choose from nearly two dozen varieties, all gorgeously pictured.
Fields throws in for free a berry huller with every order of the strawberry special. That doesn't excite me, but a 4-foot tall redwood pryamid where I could grow up to 90 strawberry plants on a space but 2-foot square intrigues me, until I check the price: $96.45.
I can buy a lot of strawberries at the roadside stands this summer for $96.45, and most of the berries are every bit as beautiful as those in the catalogs.
Actually, I've about stopped buying from catalogs, since I have much better luck with stuff purchased at local nurseries.
And a friend yanked me back to reality by pointing out that before I start spring planting I ought to rake the pine needles that have blanketed the yard since fall.
Nevertheless, I'm the first at the mailbox in January and February. There's no better proof than those colorful catalogs that spring is just around the corner. by CNB