Plant Catalogs

If you are a dedicated green thumb, all you do after winter begins is sit around and wait for it to be over. Two long months of dreary weather later, the sight of spring catalogs gracing your mailbox is a hopeful sign of better days to come. Some people go by the buds on the trees, others by the first crocuses, I go by the arrival of spring catalogs.
Be happy and joyful, my fellow gardeners, I already have six of them, spring is nigh!
They are my yearly indulgence and I study them to the last detail, just to make sure I'm not missing that special plant that would be just perfect for one of the empty spots I didn't fill last year. Did you know there are yellow peonies? Summer daffodils? White strawberries? Blue lilies? Every year there is something new and exciting to plant, oh, the temptation, the temptation...
I will pick a few, I just know it, I won't be able to resist them, but this is why I need a full afte
oon to study the catalogs thoroughly.
Last year I added a couple of chocolate vines, whose foliage succumbed to an overenthusiastic attempt to eliminate non-existent black spot. I just hope the plants will go easy on me for the fungicide blunder and come back from the roots.
Usually the shade garden has priority, because its dwellers are slow to grow or start from seed and there is always an appealing foxtail, monkshood or jack-in-the-pulpit beckoning from the shiny pages.
This seems to be the year for dahlias, maybe I'll try them for once, and so I don't have to dig them up in the fall, I'll plant them in pots.