Winter sport: reading seed catalogs!

When the ground is frozen solid, then is the time to read.

1. Organic Gardening magazine
2. The whole Little House collection out loud to each other
3. Seed catalogs

10,000 kinds of beets! 1100 kinds of carrots! a dozen types of kohlrabi...

We could sit and drool and think of spring. And we did. Discussed bean varieties, decided we liked Gurney's best because the seeds were cheaper and the catalog more humorous.

We were not a TV family. This must have been the festive winter scene in houses of a decades earlier before electronic alternatives.

People still read seed catalogs today. When we visit our friends and family members we often find them in their bathrooms.

We didn't understand about local foods back then. Today I would not pick Gurney's, which is in Indiana. (Their website, http://gurneys.com/, barely mentions their location, though - maybe the current fashion of using seeds from local varieties would make advertising their midwest location treacherous. And I didn't see the good ol' silly Gurney's humor on their site, either.)

We read many catalogs, bought from Gurney's, would end up planting too much. But we didn't know that yet. It was great entertainment.