The below was my first blog post and wanted to keep it up a little while longer.
Seed Porn
It seems fitting my first blog post pertains to seeds. Seeds represent a beginning, new life, not to mention all the seed idioms we've grown up with...."sowing the seeds of love" (thank you, Tears for Fears), "seed money", "seed of an idea", but who am I kidding? When the title of the post is "Seed Porn" it's probably best not to get too philosophical.
Back in December when I found myself letting my subscriptions to
Vogue and
Bazaar lapse, only to be replaced with
Urban Farm,
Mother Earth News, and
Chickens (who knew such a magazine existed?), I also started ordering tons of seed and gardening catalogs. Over the last few weeks, as we shiver against the cold winds of January.....okay, not really, here in L. A. it's usually sunny and 75 degrees, but it sounded good.....I've gotten accustomed to listening for the
ka-thunk that heralds the arrival of our mail as it gets shoved through the slot and plops to the floor.
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| Hutterite Soup |
The first catalog to arrive was Seed Savers Exchange and just about rendered me speechless....which, had that occurred, would have made my husband very happy as silence is not something he gets to experience often when I'm home and awake. That was the day I started referring to all seed catalogs as porn. How could I not? The photos make my vegetarian mouth water. The colors make my eyes dance. And the descriptions make me say to myself or anyone within earshot, "how can I
not grow this too?" A month ago I had never even heard of Hutterite Soup Beans and now can't imagine my future garden without them as they are said to produce an excellent creamy soup.
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| Bumble Bee |
Not to mention Bumble Bee Beans (a Maine native), Hidatsa Shield Figure Beans (described in
Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden), or Lina Sisco's Bird Egg Bean (a family heirloom brought to Missouri by covered wagon in the 1880s). Can you imagine what my head will be like by the time I get to the tomato section?
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| Hidatsa Shield Figure |
The world of heirloom seeds is amazing and vitally important to our health and agricultural diversity. To have the opportunity to leaf through one of these catalogs is to stroll back in history. Thanks to the preservationists and keepers of these seeds, we may very well also be gazing into the future. I hope it will be my future.
P.S.-- The mail just came......guess what I got?
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| Lina Sisco's Bird Egg |
