Well the excitement is kinda bittersweet. Its the end of the year and reminder of all the things I wanted to do that never happened. So next year I will add those things to the list. Next year I will_______

fill in the blank

I've gotten SSE and Tomato Grower's Supply so far.

Next year I will PLANT MORE EVERYTHING!!!!!

Me too especially the stuff I eat lol

The arrival of the catalogs truly is a cause for celebration. My first catalog to arrive every year is from HPS, and I like it because it often provides the first glimpse of the new AAS winners. I usually get it in August. Since All-American Selections now has changed the timing of their announcement of the annual winners, HPS may not be the first look I get at the AAS winners any more, but since it arrives in August when the weather is too miserably hot to do much outdoors, I still can spend hours looking at the HPS catalog.

Dixondale usually is the second catalog I get, and then the others arrive on their own schedule. I don't remember when I got my Dixondale catalog, but it seems like it was about a month ago. It seemed earlier than usual this year.

Often, by the time the more mainstream catalogs like Burpee and Park Seed arrive in the mailbox, my seed shopping is already over for the year. Really, with so much of the seed catalogs and shopping online nowadays, I think the timing of the arrival of the catalogs has spread out more than it used to be and is all over the place, but I'd still rather have the catalogs arrive in fall so I can order seeds and have them on-hand when winter seed-starting time arrives. If the catalogs arrive in February after I'm already raising seedlings indoors, the odds are that I'm not going to order any more seeds anyway. Of course, I am a seed-a-holic and have more seeds in my seed box than I'll ever be able to plant, so it probably would be best if I just ignore most of the catalogs anyway.

Pretty catalog photos and dazzling descriptions temp winter-weary gardeners to order more seeds than we need anyway, because dreaming of the seeds and the plants they'll become is what gets us through the winter.