Are you glued to the TV?  I am. The images of Japan and the potential further disaster as the waves move away from the epicenter is too much to look away from.  Plus it’s pouring outside, so I am unable to go outside and finish a project that I started yesterday (the video of which I can’t wait to share it with you! – it will be studio ‘g’ first – but it’s a big learning curve for me)

So my forced down time has me coming back to a project that I just haven’t completed yet. (I am embarrassed to say).  I haven’t ordered my seeds yet (I have shame, shame, shame).  In my defense, I get way too many catalogs and it has become simply overwhelming.  Something needs to be done.  Where a normal person might be able to pass a glance, pick a tomato or two, maybe some beans and few other nice varieties, I cannot.  I study, I make lists, I toss lists away and make new lists, I rifle through leftover seeds from last year, re-organize, repeat all, again.  Ugh.   I need an intervention and no one seems to be stepping in.

I find these vintage seed catalog covers from the smithsonian library to be so seductive.  Like candy for a baby, crack for an addict.

Are you the same?  Here is what I am doing to get this situation under control. (And this is my advice to you)  Pick one.  Put some down some artificial limits.  Familiarize yourself with each company and based on what is important to you, sort out your top three seed companies in order.  Then order every vegetable that you like to grow from the first, whatever they don’t offer from the second and then the same from the third.  Your second and third orders will be much smaller but you will be able to focus, and you will likely try something new that maybe you haven’t tried before, but you won’t continue to muddle in the ‘too many choices to organize’ mess (like me). Isn’t one of the 12 steps something about knowing your limits?

Put the rest of the catalogs aside – they can be useful during the growing season.  Throwout everything else.  This, along with completing my aforementioned little project are on tap for me this weekend.  What projects are your tackling this weekend?

Oh – and P.S. I just harvest about 5 gallons of sap from my maple trees….it’s on the stove cooking down now…. I think I have about 8 hours ahead of me until I have homemade maple syrup!!   It’s going to be happening Friday night here…..