Recently someone from Burpee mentioned that this year for the first time most of its seed orders would be coming from online, rather than catalogue, customers. This shouldn't surprise anyone but it's sort of sad. The arrival of plant and seed catalogues at this time of year has always been a welcome break from the darkness and cold of winter, and while we might not curl up in front of a fire in the living room to peruse our catalogues anymore, we do find time at the kitchen table or before we fall asleep, moments sandwiched in and around the busy-ness that we're all about these days.
Online shopping for seeds and plants is like any other online endeavor - a whole lot easier and quicker than doing comparison shopping with catalogues. If you want to see all the new amaryllises available for Christmas, for example, you just Google and go. There are tons.
Over the weekend the Heirloom Roses catalogue appeared in my mailbox, the result of my ordering (online, naturally, from www.heirloomroses.com) a couple of roses last summer. (It says $5 on the cover - very impressive.) I bought "Compassion," a nifty little apricot-colored climber that has a sweet fragrance, the idea being that once it fluffed over the fence, passers-by would catch a whiff. And that's been true, though on a small scale. The rose has thrived but is still not too large. One of these days ...
And I bought "Ginger Syllabub," whose flowers are described in the catalogue as "amber ginger ... exuding wave after wave of perfume." On the fragrance scale of 1-10, 10 being the most fragrant, this one rates a 9 from Heirloom Roses. On my fence, it's still a delicate little thing, but hints of greatness are there!
I have other roses ... the old standby, another climber called "New Dawn," which is pink and supposedly grows almost to tree size if you let it, and the heirloom "Portlandia," which is pink and apricot, two colors I find positively irresistible in a rose.
Sounds like a lot of roses, but they're here and there in the garden. You'd never come visit and think I'm a rosarian of any consequence. I dabble.
But last Saturday, I sat down in the kitchen and took a look at this thick, colorful catalogue that had just appeared. Suddenly I was having one of those moments you read about and people like me write about! What a delight. The photos are luscious. Every bloom looks huge, every rose is a treasure.
I found myself reading and reading ... "Very large, fully double blooms are a standout color of orange-red with a coppery cast ..." That's Dolly Parton, a hybrid tea, and it's no surprise this one has "very large, fully double blooms"!!
Dolly Parton isn't, but a lot of the names are very romantic. Paul's Himalayan Musk and Tess of the d'Urbervilles,Glamis Castle and Lady of the Mist.
It was a gloomy day, and just the sight of all these delicate beauties in picture perfection was transporting, to say the least.
Like many gardeners, I've been reluctant to take the rose plunge in any major way. Roses have a reputation, don't you know - fussy, high-maintenance, temperamental, ephemeral. But looking throught his catalogue, I had one of those moments.
Maybe it's time.
