CATALOG SEASON

It's catalong season. It is coming earlier each year, along with the department store sales and the TV ads for Christmas.
I don't suppose the economy is any better for the seed and plant nursery people than is it for anybody else.
I don't have Burpee, but I have Bluestone Perennials.
Oh boy.
I open it at any place and inhale the smell of flowers: Stella de Oro, Hyperion, Always Afternoon....Raspberry Pixie...
I open it to summer days and evenings: Moonbeam Coreopsis, Sienna Sunset,
Full Moon, and my favorite, described as a "cheery Tickseed"-Jethro Tull. Named not after the singer but the British Agriculturist, who was born in 1674.

See and you thought you couldn't learn anything from a plant catalog, didn't you?

I open it to cool, waving grasses:MIscanthus Morning Light (Silver Maiden Grass) or silver topped Miscanthus Graziella. The little yellow clumps of Hakonechloa All Gold. Or my favorite, because  it graces the front of our house, growing up to 6 feet high--Miscanthus Purpurascens, with it's maroon plumes in the fall shooting up above the plant and blowing gracefully in the wind.

But that's not the only catalog. The other, a fat, thick, heavy, glossy one from Dick Blick Art Supplies. Oh my. Oh my....
And I start through it:
Winsor Newton gouache paints in such colors! Bengal Rose. Cerulean Blue.Linden Green. Saffron Green. Can you see them? The rose and the bright blue, the grey-green of Linden trees?

Paintbrushes from such exotic sounding animals-- sable, boar, camel  and then I see "Scholastic Pony" and I wonder-- could the pony read?  And for all these weird sounding uses: Flat wash. Flat foot. Fan. Filbert. Angular Shader.

And then page after page devoted to those art supplies you never had but probably cannot live another year without buying.
A Paragon Kiln for a bit over $3000.00. How did we manage without one before?
A "Marvy Uchida Corru-Gated Paper Crimper"-- how did we crimp paper before?
And can we live without a "Funky Groovy Tie-Dye Kit"? Probably not. Pass the wine, please.
Of course we have saved a few pennies for the very best:

"Gyotaku Learn the Japanese art of Rubbimg Fish."
WHy am I not surprised?

And here I sit in my room, reading catalogs and watching the food channel. What a way to spend winter.