Starting Seeds: Glossy Garden Porn via Hudson Valley Seed Libray

 Imperfectly perfect

Hudson Valley Seed Library, one of our favorites, muses on too-pretty seed catalogs in this post:

"Every farm or garden is a story with its own tragedy, slapstick, drama, sex, death, and delicious redemption. Where are the catalogs that communicate the stories of losing all your Brussels Sprouts over night to one woodchuck, giving a hummingbird a bath with the hose, finding self-sown volunteers from last year, wishing for rain, wishing for sun, having a stand-off with a young buck over an apple sapling, listening to pollinators, being stung, finding a lost ripe musk melon hidden beneath weeds, watching helplessly as your tomatoes rot from blight, forgetting what variety you planted and having to wait two months to find out, flitting from open flower to flower hand-pollinating with a freshly picked male stamen, sitting down to a meal your grew yourself, blemishes and all?"

Seems to me these shared stories of triumph and disaster are the reason garden blogs flourish, with ideas and potential fixes exchanged among neighbors across a virtual fence.

We who love growing often castigate ourselves for less-than-lovely outcomes. As if we're mostly in charge.

 Cracked, streaked, and delectable