Rain, Seed Catalogs, and a Cold

As I look out at the rainy weather and watch weeds gaily thrusting forth from the soil, I cough, again, and wonder about the latest offerings from the seed and plant catalogs beside me.  Should I try this one – Arenaria ‘Wallowa Mts'-- Moss Sandwort  ?   How lovely, a form of sandwort that has tiny evergreen leaves and doesn’t flower.  “Neat looking and tidy”; sounds so fab, but wait, not for my growing zone, only for 4-8.  Drat!! 

I’ve been doing this now, the reading and wanting, for the last few hours.  In between coughing fits and nose blowing, I’ve managed to find almost everything in this catalog from High Country Gardens Santa Fe New Mexico that is not for this area or that needs special care only a greenhouse can provide in this area.

I want to be working in the yard, continuing my never ending battle with pruning shears in hand.  Didn’t I just buy a new blade for my Felcos just for this war?  The shears are now just sitting idle looking rather sad and forlorn as though I abandoned them for life!  Sorry guys but I can’t go outdoor, I have a bad cold – this is the worst one-week vacation I’ve taken in years!

I put in for my vacation with the boldest of plans: prune roses and the other shrubs in the yard; purchase new seeds for the annuals that will look wonderful in the empty pots around the patio (various zinnias and other annuals); check out Annie’s Annuals catalog for must haves and then get them; and just putter around the garden as though I was in charge and not those birds who are fighting over which shrub and old nest is whose.

What did I get instead?  I’ll tell you: a surprise trip out of town for three days and a cold which came with a bark of a cough.  You know it’s bad when your sister-in-law in the next hotel room thanks you for keeping her up all night!  But that was then and now is now.

Now it’s dry and the wind is blowing like crazy; on the horizon to the West is another dark bank of clouds coming this way.  I know if I had just stayed at work that there would be no rain or gloom.

But looking out another window, my “star magnolia” (Magnolia stellata) is blooming away – though the winds and rain are pounding at it, that little tree is covered in the white, long-petaled blossoms.  It is proof that Spring can’t be too far behind. I have to stop writing and musing now, coughing and sneezing have waited long enough for my attention!

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