SEED MONEY

By TAD BARTIMUS

This is the season when the earth is dreaming.

Gardeners, meanwhile, fret and fidget without their Digitalis mertonensis, Verbena 'Homestead Purple' and ever-faithful Gaillardia x grandiflora 'Goblin.' Deprived of the Merton foxglove, Homestead purple verbena and Goblin blanket flower – and just plain old daisies and nasturtiums on the window sill -- we try to hold in check our impatience for spring by pouring over new seed catalogs.

Dazzling us with headlines such as CAREFREE BEAUTIES and EASY, LONG-BLOOMING PERRENIALS, we perform our annual rite of dog-earring pages, circling descriptions with red ink and fantasizing about what our gardens will look like when we have these new flowers in them.

Just as the land lies fallow at this time of year, so, too, should our minds. We ought to savor this mental lull between Christmas and tax time, between New Year's and Easter, to let our psyches rest from the hubbub. Winter offers us a hiatus for imagining, gives us an excuse to put our thoughts on cruise control until the sun comes back and the cold goes away. We are not, after all, so far removed from our fellow mammals, the hibernating bear and groundhog.

Savoring seed catalogs, we can turn page after perfect page of gardens and permit ourselves the belief that all our horticulture hopes will come true, all our summer plans will turn out the way we want. We begin to wonder why our relationships, like our gardens, can't become weed-free. Looking at trimmed hedges and immaculate walkways, we see in these pictures possibilities for our own lives.

Surely, we think, if we can control wasps and slugs we can control children and stress. By gazing at tidy mazes and string-straight borders, we entertain the possibility of pruning our routines that way, too. All gardeners are optimists.

I usually sit down with seed catalogs late at night, when my resistance is low and I've spent a chaotic day indoors. Close-up photos of blowsy, brilliant blooms sucker me into filling up not only the order blank, but also the extra space on the back. Because my garden is a joy rather than a chore, I always blow my budget on such exotica as creeping myrtle and primroses which the experts say can't possibly grow where I live. Never mind. I'd rather wear a ratty old sweater and spend my extra money trying to beat the odds with a gardenia bush than pay Macy's for a new cardigan.

Besides, I can't help myself. I was raised by women who liked to kneel in mud and get their hands dirty. They said it helped them solve problems, kept them humble and connected their souls to the land. Maybe it's genetic; my great grandparents depended entirely on their farms to support them.

My generation's version of property ownership is a house and yard in a neighborhood, or a condo with a balcony. It's called progress, but I can't help thinking that going without your own tomato patch is a step backwards for civilization.

Gardening guarantees solitude since nobody else around here seems inclined to bend creaky knees toward weeds or heft concrete urns for the fun of it. It's one of the few places where I can lose myself in my own thoughts, away from the clamor of TV, CDs, radio, telephone, pager and conversation. I can breathe air that isn't hermetically sealed, feel sun and breeze not controlled by thermostats. My garden is the one place I can see immediate results. Proper nurturing or too much fussy attention? Plants aren't polite; they either thrive through proper care or keel over for lack of it. Would that the rest of life could be as uncomplicated.

Take heart, gardeners; the first day of spring is March 20th.

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