Seed catalogs teach patience

About this time in January an odd periodical begins to show up at homes across the Midwest: seed catalogs.

In the middle of Iowa's coldest month, spring gardening may sound like the most distant of our concerns. But as the old adage goes, we most want what we cannot have. And for a few months at least, green and a balmy warmth won't be seen in these parts.

Growing up on a farm, catalogs from companies such as White Flower Farm, High Country Gardens, Henry Field's, and the king of them all, W. Atlee Burpee Seeds, would arrive daily by mail during mid-January. My parents had stacks of them, and they read them for pleasure as if they were children who'd just been handed the Christmas catalog.

It is easy to see why: Each page brimmed with bright pictures of flowers, melons, vegetables, corns from sweet to ornamental to popcorn, all in prime form as if blue ribbon winners at the state fair. Why, there were more varieties in those few pages than ever appeared at our town's largest supermarket or greenhouse.

Enticing descriptions accompanied each picture - "Tastes like it's been brushed with honey!" "A carnival of colors!" - and just for my utilitarian father, I imagined as a child, those delights were followed by words such as "Quick drying ears ... Good disease resistance."

Serpents in the garden

Reading those catalogs, you almost could feel the dirt in your hands, could see the array of colors growing around you, could breathe in each fragrant bloom. Indeed, as the snow piled up outside and the wind dropped to temperatures below zero, cozying up in an easy chair and clinging to every word wasn't difficult.

But one always had to read seed catalogs closely, for amid that garden of delights were serpents.

I remember my parents buying sweet peppers because they were "fast growing." Both recalled how as children they loved having the tangy orange slices mixed with salads, and their eyes grew dreamy. And so, like children impatient for cookies to finish baking, they ordered a "fast growing" variety from Burpee, all in hope that their cravings would be met a couple of weeks earlier.

But within a month of planting, they discovered that "fast-growing" was just a euphemism for "fast spreading." Soon the sweet peppers sprouted all over the garden, elbowing out squash and carrots, strangling tomatoes and tulips, threatening the sweet corn and yams. They battled all summer long to keep this new weed from taking over the garden and the next spring dug up the peppers so they wouldn't take over the bed.

Indeed, little descriptions such as "mildew-resistant" probably meant the plant would succumb should we have a wetter than normal season. "Drought-resistant" really meant the plant wouldn't last if we had a less than average rainfall.

Seed catalogs, I also discovered, were a great way to learn Latin.

Vocabulary booster

Most catalogs offer both the plants' common and botanical names. Consider the sunflower. Its Latin name is Helianthus annus, meaning "annual sunflower." "Annus" is Latin for "annual," "heli" referred to "sun" and "anthus" to "flower." Such knowledge helped get me through fifth grade vocabulary tests: It was an easy guess that "heliocentric," or "sun at the center" referred to the scientific theory that the sun rather than the earth was at the center of the solar system.

"How'd you know?" my friend Kirby asked me when he got it wrong on the test.

"Seed catalogs," I said smugly as he did a double take and scratched his head in confusion.

Almost as exciting as reading seed catalogs was receiving the packets that had been ordered. An illustration showing what the seeds might look like that autumn covered the front of each pocket-sized envelope. It was akin to staring at a pie set on the window sill to cool.

As the days of summer passed and gardening turned into a chore that just didn't seem worth it when cans of peas and carrots were so readily available on grocery store shelves, the dog-eared seed catalogs found themselves at the bottom the magazine rack. Eventually, though, if one were patient enough and put in the necessary hours toiling over garden rows, the flowers bloomed and the vegetables ripened, sometimes not looking quite as nice as those pictures we drooled over in January, but smelling and tasting just as good as we had imagined.

Then, after we'd stuffed ourselves on the bounty, there was the sweet satisfaction in knowing that all of our hard work had paid off.

And to think, it all began on a frigid winter day with a vision planted by a simple seed catalog.

(originally published Jan. 13, 2003)