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The weather outside is frightful, but the garden catalogs are so delightful.

Inside where it's warm and cozy, the annual garden catalog season is in full bloom. Mailboxes are filling up with colorful garden catalogs, and millions of Americans are relaxing in their most comfortable easy chairs with stacks of colorful garden catalogs. Dreams of colorful spring flowers and a bountiful harvest of fresh vegetables dance in their heads.

It is no accident that January has officially been proclaimed National Mailorder Gardening Month by the Mailorder Gardening Association (www.mailordergardening.com), because the first of the year is traditionally when garden catalogs start arriving in mailboxes. Garden catalogs are filled with colorful pictures of new plants and blooming gardens, so they offer a much-needed emotional boost for gardeners who are longing to get their hands into garden soil and raise another crop of gorgeous flowers and delicious vegetables.

"There is no better way to beat the winter doldrums than to flip through a stack of mailorder gardening catalogs or visit online gardening websites," said Howard Kaplan, president of the Mailorder Gardening Association (MGA). "Garden catalogs show you new possibilities for your garden and also serve as time-saving planning tools. Garden catalogs offer the widest possible variety of plants, seeds, bulbs and gardening supplies — including the newest products not yet available in retail stores. Plus, mailorder catalogs and online Web sites offer useful tips and information to help you create a more beautiful garden."

To get the most from gardening catalogs and websites this season, follow this helpful advice:

• Visit www.mailordergardening.com and click on "catalog search" to see a list of garden catalog companies. Then click on the individual names to visit specific Web sites and request garden catalogs.
• Use garden catalogs as planning tools for your spring garden. Flip through a few catalogs to see what kinds of new plants and products are being offered this year.
• Mark the plants, seeds, preplanned gardens, tools and garden accessories that you’re interested in with sticky notes.
• Go back through the catalogs and review everything you've flagged with a sticky note. Make a list of all of the plants and products that you simply must have.
• Place your orders early. The most popular seeds, plants, and new products often sell out quickly. (Seeds will usually be shipped early in the season to give you the option of starting them indoors. Plants will be shipped when it is safe to plant them outdoors based upon your zip code.)
• Keep a list of all the orders you've placed so you can track the deliveries as they come in.
• File the catalogs in a safe place so you can refer to them later, and you can easily contact each catalog company if questions about your purchases arise. Remember, too, that most garden catalogs and Web sites have helpful gardening experts that you can contact to get additional gardening information and advice.

By John Hershey
Freelance Writer

Whenever I'm in a group of people talking about Denver Urban Gardens, everyone naturally and subconsciously peppers their speech with garden metaphors. We believe, for example, that instead of trying to start many more gardens quickly in a top-down approach, the DUG network should grow organically, from the grass roots. DUG does not try to transplant the community garden model into neighborhoods from outside. Rather, when the desire to create a garden germinates among committed people in the neighborhood, DUG supports them in nurturing the project. We all want community gardens to be successful and benefit neighborhoods for many years, so DUG's mission is to help when neighbors join together to cultivate new gardens, because experience shows that urban gardens tend to thrive and be, um, perennial when they are deeply rooted in the community.

Wow, that was at least nine garden metaphors (ten if you're willing to count "peppers") in one little paragraph about our organization. I suppose it's natural that horticultural allusions would sprout up (eleven!) in discussions about a gardening network. But that's just the low-hanging fruit! Look around: gardening imagery is constantly invoked to explain and teach lessons about all areas of life. The garden is fertile ground that yields a bounty of metaphors you can organize your whole life around.

Can you dig it?

The abundance of garden images in our language shows that a garden is not just a place to grow food. As a microcosm of the natural world and the cycle of life, the garden produces excellent models of how we and our communities can grow and thrive in ways that are more organic, sustainable, and in harmony with the natural order.

For example, I am a person of very strong values and deeply held convictions. I don't live in accordance with them, but I have them. So I know that all of these principles that lead to success and personal satisfaction — cooperation, discipline, delayed gratification, self-sufficiency, and so on — can be unearthed by working in a garden. A garden is, well, a garden where good values take root and flourish as examples for us in other areas of our lives. And if we wanted to summarize them all, we would pick a garden metaphor: You reap what you sow.

The garden metaphor is adaptable to all fields of human endeavor, including even business and government. The city of Littleton, Colorado, actually adopted the garden as its official symbol of economic development. The garden model was seen as an alternative to the common practice of offering costly tax breaks and other incentives to lure big existing companies from outside, a top-down approach akin to planting GMO corn and drenching it with Roundup to obliterate whatever life remained in the local soil. Under Littleton's garden model, the city saved money by spending a much smaller amount (seed capital?) to create a favorable environment (fertile ground!) for local entrepreneurs to grow businesses in a culture of diversity, innovation, and creativity. I don't know all the details — when it comes to economics, I'm much more comfortable on the metaphorical level. But from what I've read, thousands of successful, homegrown small businesses are flourishing as a result of this garden strategy.

On the national level, the garden is the go-to symbol of hope and renewed economic growth. In recent interviews, both current Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and his predecessor Alan Greenspan claimed to see "green shoots" sprouting in various sectors, reflecting their cyclical view that an economic springtime is coming.

We talk about so many fundamental things in gardening terms because growing food is among the most basic human acts. So thinking like a gardener keeps us grounded when we venture out into the complex modern world. Perhaps in some ways it is good that the economic crisis is undermining what used to be generally accepted ways of living — for example, insisting that our food be cheap, even if that means it's unhealthy and gross, so we can spend our money consuming more important things like plasma TVs. Ideas like that have to be weeded out eventually — they don't give us what we really need. Gardening leads us back to more natural ways of thinking about food, the relative value of time and money, and other very basic things. So it's no surprise that more people are turning to the garden as a model for a life that makes more sense and as a tangible place to start living it. For the community gardening movement, in other words, these are the salad days.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must hurry out to the garden. It's autumn, there's not much left to harvest out there, and I have to go and take a leek.

John Hershey is a dad, gardener, and recovering lawyer. To read more garden-variety humor and commentary, visit John's Web site: rakishwit.com.

"I kept my dog's cone-shaped Elizabethan collar from a recent surgery and use it to protect good plants when I spray weeds," writes Vivian Miller. "I use one end of the cone to isolate the offending plants and spray from the other end."

Have a favorite gardening tip you’d like to share? Texas Gardener’s Seeds is seeking brief gardening tips from Texas gardeners to use in future issues. If we publish your tip in Seeds, we will send you a free copy of Texas Gardener's 2010 Planning Guide & Calendar. Please send your tips of 50 words or less to the editor at: Gardening Tips.

Texas Persimmon occurs in all parts of Texas except the pineywoods, rolling plains and high plains. It is a small tree barely taller than 10 ft in most cases. The attractive tree has beautiful peeling outer bark and smooth inner bark with shades of gray, white and pink. Some individual Texas persimmon trees even match the beauty of the fabulous madrone. Persimmons make a great addition to a landscape where space is limited and are much easier to propagate than madrones.

By Kelly Conrad Bender

NEW EDITION of the popular Texas Parks & Wildlife book, now with fully searchable DVD containing all the plant and animal information you need to customize your backyard habitat.

Whether you have an apartment balcony or a multi-acre ranch, the Texas Wildscapes program provides the tools you need to make a home for all the animals that will thrive in the native habitat you create.

In Texas Wildscapes, Kelly Conrad Bender identifies the kinds of animals you can expect when you give them their three basic needs: food, water, and shelter. She then provides guidelines for designing and planting your yard or garden to best provide these requirements for the many birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates the environment will attract.

$31.88 includes tax and shipping

Order online with credit card at www.texasgardener.com or call toll-free 1-800-727-9020.

Visa, MasterCard and Discover accepted.

Doug Welsh’s Texas Garden Almanac is a giant monthly calendar for the entire state — a practical, information-packed, month-by-month guide for gardeners and "yardeners." This book provides everything you need to know about flowers and garden design; trees, shrubs, and vines; lawns; vegetable, herb, and fruit gardening; and soil, mulch, water, pests, and plant care. It will help you to create beautiful, productive, healthy gardens and have fun doing it.

$26.63 plus shipping*

Order by calling 1-800-727-9020 or order on-line.

*Mention Texas Gardener’s Seeds when ordering by phone and we’ll waive shipping charges. (Discover, MasterCard and Visa accepted.)

Grow-Web encourages plant growth and development, and also provides protection from insects, birds, diseases and frosts. It is also air and water permeable and allows for ventilation. Grow-Web provides excellent protection to seedlings when applied directly to the seedbed.

$30.64 per 12.3’ x 32.8’ roll (includes shipping!)

Order by calling 1-800-727-9020 or order on-line.

(Discover, MasterCard and Visa accepted.)

Texas Gardener’s Seeds is published weekly. © Suntex Communications, Inc. 2009. All rights reserved. You may forward this publication to your friends and colleagues if it is sent in its entirety. No individual part of this newsletter may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher.

Missed an issue? Back issues of Texas Gardener’s Seeds are available at www.texasgardener.com/newsletters.

Publisher: Chris S. Corby ● Editor: Michael Bracken

Texas Gardener’s Seeds, P.O. Box 9005, Waco, Texas 76714 ● www.TexasGardener.com