No sooner did the hysterical promises of extra-super-delivery-in-time-for-Christmas catalogs slack off, than the deluge of seed catalogs began.  I’m as into seed catalogs as the next person – well, okay, I’m way more into seed catalogs than the actual next person, since that’s Doug – but really, I need a break. I need to look out the window at the yard and garden and be at rest. At peace with the pilfering deer and marauding woodchuck, the weeds, the weather, the kinky hoses. If the seed catalogs come, can the garlic mustard be far behind?

Besides, I have some issues to work out before I go near the seed catalogs. Maybe some New Year’s resolutions would help. Resolved: to stop raising forty seven tomato plants from seed when I can squeeze out room in my garden for thirty at the most. Resolved: to limit myself to three kinds of cosmos and four of zinnias instead of getting carried away, which that is not, in case you wondered.

But I resolved long ago to make only resolutions I’m able to keep, and these aren’t them. Though I have turned their faces to the wall, the seed catalogs lurk. Red cheeks of tomato porn and promises of their happy and fruitful consummation with companion-planted marigolds gleam in the late-winter light as I sit by the window, trying to ignore them. The window’s not helping, because the snow is temporarily gone, and the lawn is strangely green.

Come back, snow, I need you. You’ll get your own time off again in April.