Originally published in the Northern Agrarian.

When I write about gardening I sometimes, without meaning to, give the impression that I wake every morning to survey a vast domain of neatly tilled beds and a refrigerator bursting with home-grown produce. In fact we have very little space. We own an acre and a quarter, but nearly all of it is wooded; very little gets enough sun to support a garden — and most of that is in the backyard, which has the twin disadvantage of being underlaid by a septic field and being overrun by basset hounds. The former means we can’t dig, while the later means that anything we do plant will be dug up. Read on

With the end of the holidays the seed catalogs arrive. There may be nothing more American than a seed catalog: it is both the song of nature and the promise of perfectability, conveniently packaged for a low low price. It lures us with photographs of plump vegetables in green gardens and plump children in green grass, the fruit of the earth and of our loins, the promise of spring and of a new generation. Beneath swelling tomatoes and glistening heads of broccoli captions proclaim Hybrid! They are bigger, stronger, more durable, better tasting, more nutritious, longer growing, the wonder of technology. We can make the world better; just add water and warm sun and hard work and clean living. It may not be uniquely American, this promise of technology and commerce to grant us natural wonder and old-fashioned virtue, but it is American. An American dream in an envelope. In the pit of winter it is irresistable.