Seeds:

Used to be they started trickling in after Christmas, after all the tinsel and pine boughs were cleared out, tax documents filled the mailbox and the darkest days of winter hung over my world. You know those days, where cold is deeper than bone, hazy, gray days are the norm and snow is almost a relief from the inversion.

Now, often as not, they come along with the Christmas cards and catalogs. They come when I’m too busy wrapping presents and making treats to enjoy. So, I put them aside with regret and don’t open them until after the madness of Christmas and New Years is over.

There’s a huge pile this year, two inches of seductive, lush seed catalogs. The color pictures more tempting than Godiva chocolate. That tomato on the cover dripping juice and sunshine. That hollyhock mix glowing yellow, copper, rose, red, burgundy-purple and white, as yummy looking as jellybeans.

I promised that this year I’d be reasonable. This year I’d be smart. I wouldn’t buy too many flower seeds for the flower gardens we condensed last year. I wouldn’t go overboard on the vegetable seeds. Not this year. But, oh, how to choose?

Seed catalogs remind me of my writing ideas. Too many. I write every idea that comes to me down in an idea file, but I can’t use all of them. I know that. So, how do I choose? I love them all. I must or I wouldn’t take the time to write them down. So, then it comes down to weeding out the impractical, the too hard, the too easy, the too-much research, the curious, the unexciting.

I narrow it down until I'm left with only those things (ideas or seeds) I just can’t stop thinking about. Then, I narrow it down even more. To the one or two ideas (seeds) that I just can’t shake, that I know exactly what to do with. And I tell myself that next year, I'll make different choices.

As hard as it is, that's better than no ideas, (or no seed catalogs)?