Winter Appeal of Garden Catalogs

The cold, snow, and ice sometimes get to me.

I know that feeling also makes me appreciate the garden catalog.

Right now a catalog appears in my mailbox every few days. I love them.

This week I came across a wonderful article in the English magazine The Living Age from January 3, 1914. The name of the article is “On Flower Catalogues” by Jessie Fielding Marsh.

Marsh delights in the arrival of the garden catalog at her doorstep.

Here is a seed catalog from that time. Look at the warm, rich colors on the cover. This is probably the kind of catalog that would have come to her door.

She writes, “Catalogues are for grey days, dark days, when our outlook on life is a sad one, when our plants lie under the earth and there seems no prospect of any return of color and warmth.”

She ends the article with a wonderful sense of hope.

Marsh writes, “Yes, in winter you read your catalogues – in summer you live them!”