Tuesday night I probably passed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse on my way home from work but didn’t notice – I had two back-to-back evening meetings cancelled, leaving me with an unexpectedly free evening.  (The odds of having two meetings on the same night cancelled are so astronomical I can’t calculate them, and I probably should have purchased a lottery ticket on my way home.)  It must have been the end of the world – I had a free evening.  Perhaps the Horsemen in were in the drive-through line at Dunkin’ Donuts which is why I missed them when I drove by.

So, home then, for dinner.  While chatting with J, I flipped through the pile of mail and there it was, shining like a new penny, calling out to me like a siren’s song:  the new seed catalog.  (Cue chorus of angels singing.)

We have been loyal to Pinetree Garden Seeds since we first started growing our own vegetables.  Our first year, we ordered several different company catalogs on the advice of my father-in-law, but were most interested in Pinetree because they’re based in Maine and family owned and operated.  Their seeds are relatively inexpensive, orders are packed by hand, and they guarantee their product.  Last year we only looked at their catalog for our orders, and placed our order just after Christmas, in early January.

Now, Christmas calls to mind many things for people – decorations, tree trimming, gathering with family, celebrations – and it does for me too, but in addition, Christmas to me is the line in the sand for chosing the seeds to be ordered after the first of the year.  I distinctly remember sitting in the living room last year, admiring our decorated Christmas tree, circling types of seeds to add to our list.  And since we put up a fresh tree we cut down ourselves (that’s a whole other blog-worthy post) within two weekends of Christmas, in my head I have the seed catalog arriving in December, not before Thanksgiving.

But there it was.  And so I did what any garden enthusiast who had an unexpected free night home with her husband:  I completely ignored him and spent time paging through the catalog, pencil in hand.  I think he tried to talk to me.  I think he tried to tell me about his day.  But his train of thought must have been interrupted many times with my abrupt interjections to read him the catalog descriptions of things like lunar white carrots (“Henry VIII ate them!”) and purple trionfo violetta pole beans (“They overran the trelises and the adjacent rows of corn.  And they’re purple!”)

I did eventually put the catalog down, mostly because I needed to get up and get another glass of water.  At which point J grabbed both the catalog and my pencil……..and began circling his own selection of seeds.