If Wishes Were Seeds

February for gardeners is like December for kids. Just like all those Christmas catalogs come in the mail to tease and taunt the little ones, February brings hopeful gardeners all those beautiful, inviting seed catalogs to their door. One by one, page by page, we are pulled to the images of lush, beautiful flower borders, vibrant veggies bursting with flavor, delightful garden ornaments and brightly-colored seed packets, each one promising the best yield God ever created! 

Now that I no longer garden on any kind of grand scale, restricted as I am by location and brittle joints to container and tabletop gardening, I still haunt the magazines, catalogs and especially websites (which saves paper, which makes me and the trees happy) looking for new ideas about things like vertical gardening, grow lights, indoor plant foods and temperatures ... the list goes one and one. Once a gardener, always a gardener.

Wouldn't it be nice to have, instead of a seed catalog to grow plants, a seed catalog that grew wishes? Can you imagine the joy of opening the mailbox and seeing a Wish Book, knowing that you could order anything you wanted out of it? Can you picture each page, full of color and excitement, luring you to chose one wish over another, promising you so much happiness that it would, indeed be, "the best yield ever?" Some folks might jump at the chance to own such a catalog, but age and experience tells me that over time it would take over your life, just like those gardeners who always have to have more, different, better, bigger, etc. At what point would we be satisfied with all that we had?

The best wishes are the ones that bring us joy regardless of the size or quantity. These are the ones that we have the power to make come true ourselves, and aren't they the ones that are the most cherished? I don't need a huge, wall-sized vertical garden. What I want are a few pots of my favorite herbs, to help my little bamboo plant to flourish, and maybe a little color in the form of variegated leaves or tiny flowers to brighten up my space. All of those things are the kinds of wishes that I can make come true all on my own, and those are the ones that will bring me the most joy.

 So, what are you going to order out of your wish catalog today?

And so it is.