Resist the Plant Lust! Reason vs. Nursery & Seed Co. Giddiness

There are stirrings of life on my mental Wazoo Farm as I ease the mouse cursor over Gurney's Nursery's happy images of tender male asparagus, doting lily of the valley, potpourric lavender, phallic Red Hot Pokers and stripey, muscular rhubarb stalks. Botany-intoxication floods warmly through me as I add:

Storm Petunia ("Legendary Performance!")

Hopa crabapple ("Like a Rosy Bouquet")

Hybrid tea roses ("elegant summer blooms")

Russian Sage ("Decidedly Fragrant Foliage")

And who can resist the "Blooming-est Daylily Ever?"

Who indeed?

It would be madness, I tell myself, not to click all these bright and varied plants! They can be mine! Click the mouse, by George, buy the lot! I can just see smell the hybrid teas, can feel the earlobes of the snapdragons, can feel within the core of my very being the wild excitement of Summer Pastel Yarrow's "Explosion of Color!"

O, Gurney's Seed & Nursery Co. has got me pegged. I drool all over the keyboard in undisguised plant lust as I tap in the plant codes.

"Forget the credit card balance!" I mutter under my breath. "Forget the drafts and the heating bill! Forget the mice problem! Forget the mortgage payment!" I want lilies, bleeding heart, balloon flower, and Mr. Lincoln the lovely hybrid tea!

I WANT SPRING! And I want to feel earthworms wiggling around my fingers and soil caking on my feet and blisters on my hands. I want these things and I want truckloads of profusely blooming perennials for my beds.

Ah, reason. The virtue that saves lovers from suicide, mothers from tearing their hair, marriages from ruin, cars out of canyons, credit cards from soaring balances. I reduce quantities, blink back tears, erase items completely. I have whittled my list down to a reasonable amount, alas for Gurney's Nursery, good for our bank account. Wazoo Farm will still be Wazoo Farm with a few less roses.

Of course, I still have three catalogs to go. Seeds of Change is selling trees, now, and I want every packet of their zinnia seeds. Henry Fields has a sale. I still have to do my part for trees by joining the Arbor Society, and filling their coffers with my nonexistent money. And did I mention the heirloom tea rose catalog on its way to my door?

Seems my hands will not lack from blisters this spring after all. Whoopee!