Okay, so it's February

So what am I doing looking at a seed catalog? Well, I figured (as I do every year actually) that I would start some plants from seed this year. I already have some bell peppers and some kind of squash, which I have by virtue of having kept them when I was cooking. I could probably get tomatoes this way too except that I almost never use fresh tomatoes and I doubt the canned ones would sprout.

But this is a non-approved way of acquiring seeds. So I went to the local, er, farming store I suppose and looked at what they had. Which was not much. Nobody in Holland is seeding right now which ought to give me a clue.

Of course it did not, don't be silly.

So I asked a firend, which is what you do when you have no idea what to do. And she sent me the link to a seed place.

Oh. My. God.

There are 47 pages of just vegetables. I haven't even got to the fruits yet and the flowers will probably take until May when I can seed directly in the ground. I expected the 47 billion varieties of string bean, as the Dutch are mad for beans. I didnot expect to encounter vegetables I never heard of before. The first thing on the list is called an Aardaker, lathyrus tuberosus, which is apparently a root vegetable of which I have never ever heard a word. So I looked it up. There is some debate about whether it is a vegetable or an herb but no argument that it is used to flavor whiskey. An Alsempeer translates as a bitter melon and comes from south america. They say it tastes like hell but has near magical blood sugar lowering qualities. And further more -- they have six different varieties to choose from.

I promise not to go out of the "A"s, though, this is a very large catalog. Clearly I have friends with very discriminating tastes. Hey, I was getting my seeds from the vegetables at the local grocery store, my head is spinning.

They have about seventy kinds of pumpkin, and incude the butternut squash as a variety of pumpkin oddly enough. Only a few of the kinds of pumpkin they list are intended to be eaten, though, and less than five appear to be pie pumpkins so the selection there should be simple.

On the other hand, I may not get to watermelon in time to plant watermelon.

Hey, dad, get that look off your face, it's a big roof. Well, no, I don't actually know anyone who ever tried watermelon in a container but a girl's gotta have an ambition. Watermelon and pumpkin vines on the same roof seems ambitious to me.

Anyway, I'd love to write more but I have to go read my seed catalog. I may never stop reading it long enough to actually order anything.