The leopard frog (I’ll call ours “Frogg”) usually lives in grasslands near rivers or creeks or streams. In the winter, it avoids freezing by living underwater. If frozen, it becomes a miracle – Frogg’s organs are filled with an antifreeze that will allow them to thaw after freezing. Leopard frogs live 6 to 9 years.

So Frogg has a future! And maybe a past. It’s hard to tell how he came to live in our shower, but my non spontaneous-generation ideas have mostly centered on him hatching there somehow. Don’t tell me it’s unlikely. This whole thing is unlikely!

We perhaps waited too long to remove Frogg from the bathroom. I don’t know how a frog’s hunting skills may be impacted by the wrong kind of environmental start in the formative stages. (I was totally impressed and a little horrified that Frogg found sufficient food to survive on for several months in my not-visibly-overrun-by-insects bathroom!)

My plan was to take Frogg by surprise while he was sitting off to the side of the shower grate and accessible. My method, which originated with insects and works on mice, too, would be to pop a clear container over the frog, scoop a dustpan under him or her, and then drive to the sandpit and return Frogg to a proper Frogg world.

You can’t make a frog come out any more than you can get a turtle to stick his neck out, though. It was June already when I finally spotted him in the corner. Steven and I grabbed a Tupperware container of appropriate size and sneaked into the bathroom. I asked Steven to do the actual capture because he can move very very quickly. To no avail – Frogg is faster than I’d given credit for, although I knew he catches bugs and eats them, something I’m way too slow for.

Plan B involved lifting the grate in the floor of the shower, and catching (I imagined) a hopping, desperate to escape Frogg. Luckily for this procedure, Frogg did not seem to notice that his ceiling was being lifted at all. He sat absolutely still while Steven calmly swooped on him, I wielded the dustpan, and we were off to the sandpit.

It was all pretty anti-climactic after that. We selected a site at the edge of the water, with grass around, and put Frogg’s conveyance down. He quickly  hopped onto the real ground. I still wonder if it was a home-coming or a brave new world.

As you can see, Frogg is well camouflaged for this environment. His complete invisibility as soon as I’d looked away once reassured me that he’ll probably survive there, where he can find Destiny, or perhaps a frog of a different gender. And in any case, I’d personally rather be trying to survive in a real environment than in an artificial one. I hope Frogg agrees with me.

In the time he’s been in office, Snyder has followed “the people’s” agenda of removing tax breaks for the poor and elderly and gutting budgets for any state funding of local municipalities and districts, while cutting corporate taxes by 86%. In addition, he’s instituted measures that say that if a local entity is judged to be in financial trouble (hmm – wonder how they could have gotten to that point? Oh yeah, cutting their budgets) the state can step in and dissolve the locally elected or selected boards and appoint a manager.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/14/956355/-Michigan-Gov-Snyder-set-to-auction-off-MI-towns-to-highest%C2%A0bidders

The “liberal press” as my dad likes to think of the current mass media, he being a close student of Fox network, has said virtually nothing. The hue and cry has come from the unions, including teachers, and grassroots protests. Only Rachel Maddow seems to know we’re here.

In fact, many of my fellow Michigan citizens don’t seem to know we’re here, either. Bewildered by an economy sacked and pillaged by one administration and given an uncomfortable triage by the next, Michigan actually elected this guy. It’s analogous to asking to have your leg chopped off to feed the boss’ pit bull, in my opinion.

If only we had legislators who could act as though they actually liked the people they represent! If only we could awaken the public to actually vote in elections, arming themselves first with knowledge from a wide variety of sources! If only we didn’t react to slogans that are designed to engage us emotionally while shutting down our critical processes!

I have friends who think this whole situation is fine. We’ll be tougher, they say. And besides, most of them make enough money right now, have jobs right now, and don’t have any medical or retirement emergencies. As their own parents age and they follow them, I’m hoping those conditions prevail. Personally, I’d like to see the safety nets we’ve built to replace the communities we’ve damaged stay in place.

“There’s a hole in the bucket and the people fall out. There’s money underground, but you can’t get it out when you stand at the state house and smile and say ‘please’. There’s a hole in the bucket for the people in need.”

Catie Curtis wrote that, so long ago we should be collectively ashamed. Sure, we’re rich in this country. Our poorest may look rich against 3rd world countries, but a serious look at our own communities, let alone real hotbeds of poverty here, alarm thinking people.

1) 17 million children go to bed hungry in the U.S.A. every night
2) One relief organization, feedingamerica.org, is now feeding 37 million Americans, including 14 million children annually. This is an increase of 46 percent over 2006, when they were feeding 25 million Americans, including 9 million children, each year. One in eight Americans now relies on Feeding America for food and groceries.
3) Feeding America’s nationwide network of food banks is feeding 1 million more Americans each week than they did in 2006.
4) Thirty-six percent of the households served have at least one person working.
5) More than one-third of client households report having to choose between food and other basic necessities, such as rent, utilities and medical care.
6) The number of children the Feeding America network serves has increased by 50 percent since 2006.  http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-studies/hunger-study-2010.aspx

Right here in Delta County, population less than 40,000, we have more hungry than we can feed, more homeless than we can shelter, and far more families with not enough money than we can afford. And we have a government that says, “You deserve this because you didn’t work hard enough,” and acts punitively. Perhaps the intent is to drive them all to another state. But Florida, Arizona, Montana, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania – too many states, all with problems like Michigan’s – have chosen the course of blaming their poor and those who’ve banded together against poverty in unions. It’s enough to make you – vote?

Because here we have the confluence of apathy and ignorance, combined with the ever-popular greed. If only We can get Them out of the public trough, there’ll be enough for Us. If only We didn’t have to pay welfare mothers, we could unlock all those dollars and give them to the manufacturing sector. If only those unions of people We’ve been depending on for years, our policemen, firemen, teachers, would stop sucking our blood, We could give their pension plans to the managers hired by “benevolent” government. See how that helps?

Snyder ran as a simple businessman. That should have been a warning, since Gatweway was not a small business, and there’s nothing simple about business. Anyone who has watched the big corporations (like Gateway)  rush to revere the bottom line for this year’s profits over long-term health for workers and even the corporation itself, should have been wary. It is not the job of government to make money. It is the job of government to do for the people those things that must be done or are best done collectively.

Perhaps I’m wrong about these outcomes. I hope so. Being right about the negatives of a time this discouraging isn’t fun. If the agenda currently moving toward a subjugation of the public’s good isn’t stopped, I think we’ll see more soullessness, more greed pandered to, and a more fractured population. We’re sinking into the Middle Ages, and the sad thing is that we’re all deluded into thinking we’ll be lords.

But even as we advance into this Brave Old World of robber barons run amok and a populace who needs distraction stirred up against immigrants and the poor, there will probably be some benefits. You know what they said about Mussolini. He made the trains run on time.

Of course, most of those are dead. Usually it’s preferable to have “dead friends” brought in than live ones. The cats are efficient hunters, and dead is better than alive and doomed. We even have a designated spot in the yard to put the bodies. And I instruct the cats: “Fur people only. NO feather people.”

We’ve had the usual assortment of voles and mice. There have been some new feathers on the floor that might indicate corpses disposed of when we’re not around instead of the chirp from the cats that means, “Here. Aren’t you proud of me?” but usually we get rodents.

The middle of the night is a good hunting time, and we’re awakened sometimes by that proud chirp, or by a crunch that says the meal has begun (often from under our bed), or by the frantic sound of attempted escape. The last time this happened, I was nearly awake in the grey part of the early morning when Kender, our oldest and most sedentary cat, sat bolt upright in the bed next to me and then shot over me and Steven to the floor on the other side of the bed. That’s when I heard wings.

“Steven!” (My husband is the champion sleeper in our home.) “Steven! There’s a bird!”

His reply was not reproducible here, but he did eventually get up and we followed the sound to the closet, then to the sliding glass door as the wings subsided. The bird had wedged itself into a small space between a shelf of plants and the curtains. When I flashed a light on him, all I could see was a nest of brown feathers, like a bowl, each small upright feather forming the edge tipped with a tiny touch of white.

Steven got the broom, and gently encouraged the bird to move toward the sliding part of the door. I shone the light on him again, trying to see what kind of bird he was and whether he was hurt. As he was illuminated this time, I saw first a disproportionately large, liquid brown eye fixed on me, the threat. Then I noticed the long bill. It was a woodcock!

Steven and I saw the woodcock courting dance in our meadow one spring with a friend who knew lots about our flora and fauna. The males spiral up into the air, peeting as they go, until having achieved a height that pleases their egos, they fold their wings and dive to the ground, pulling out at the last moment to land in a flourish of bravado. For some reason, I thought they were a larger bird. This one was about the size of a soup bowl, fluffed feathers and all.

With our help, he hopped out the door, sat for a moment or two looking stunned. Then, just as I was sure he was injured, he exploded into the air and disappeared. I have two tiny feathers, tipped with white, for a memento.

This morning I heard a clunk on our south-facing picture window and went to make sure whatever bird had caused it was able to fly away. A female goldfinch had hit the glass and was sprawled on my flowerbed, wing off to the side. She was panting. Not good. I scanned for cats and went back to my task, keeping an eye out for movement in the area.

The next time I checked, she was barely breathing. I saw Mooshu and called him into the house, completing my set of three indoor kitties, and gave up on her. When I walked by the window again, though, she was sitting up, a small unmoving ball of feathers. I resumed kitty patrol. If she was breathing well now, she had every chance.

When she didn’t fly after a while, though, I went outdoors to check on her. I crouched a bit more than an arm’s length away, after speaking softly and foolishly to her as I approached so she would not take sudden fright and hurt herself. “Are you ready to leave?” I asked. “You don’t want to wait too long. Are you ready?”

She looked me in the eye, turned her head and looked around. I went back inside. When I looked a minute later, she was gone.

And so, a toast to life! L’Chaim! Tenacity and incredible delicacy. Survival against odds. I’m on its side.

Everything about it appeals to me, including some small corner that delights in the freedom and energy of the colors and – are those letters? – and loves the art-on-the-run feel. Clandestine art, working to create beauty while looking over your shoulder for someone who wants to stop you, is the kind of activity that’s easy to romanticize, and I have a talent for romanticizing anyway.

I sympathize with the railroad people, too. It’s my cleft stick, to be able to see both sides. I know they have to pay to repaint the cars. I know they need the numbers visible on each car to expedite its travel from a to b. I just think the cars are ‘way prettier with the paint jobs given them by anonymous souls in some dark or sidelined train yard.

Steven and I stopped by the tracks in Gladstone the other day to snap a few of the prettiest ones there at the time. I’ve put them up here, so you can enjoy them, too.

And I have a modest proposal: Instead of painting over these works, why not have contests to decorate the cars? Set aside a spot for the official number, and give pieces of the cars, like blank canvas, to the graffiti artists. When you need the car repainted, have another contest. It would give the railroads a new kind of visibility, as rolling galleries for wildly colored, freshly imagined works, and as patrons of a new art form.

You never know. It could work.

I’ve heard a lack of neighbors cited as a disadvantage, but that’s not true for me. Everyone has neighbors; our human neighbors are a bit farther away than down the block, but that’s usually all right. For one thing, it means that the nearer neighbors are more visible. Like the frog in the shower.

When we poured the shower basin, we were less familiar with quick-crete than we are now. It pebbled, making an uncomfortable surface to stand on. We put a wooden flooring over it, creating a shower a bit like that in some state parks. The drain is underneath it, and cleaning hadn’t been a problem, until the leopard frog moved in.

When I called the biologist at the DNR office, he said leopard frogs show up in very unlikely places, like water barrels. No wonder some older societies believed in spontaneous generation! Our frog is around three inches long. His khaki skin has darker spots – check out the picture. The three cats know he’s around, and Kender is very, very interested in his part of the world. It smells different there. So far, no untidy incidents involving vulnerable skin and claws. Frog mostly hides. Supposedly he or she is eating  insects, but I have only seen the occasional fruit fly and sometimes a spider in the window.

This visitor is all of a piece with others we’ve had here over the years. There were mice in the cabin when we moved in, and the previous owners tried to store everything in tins if possible. When we bought, we inherited a fair number of shredded fabric items, from dish towels to blankets and cushions.

There was a white-footed mouse in the other day, as a matter of fact. He or she did not look like a feline import – those tend to look more limp, dissected, or at least wounded. This one was perky, scurrying from semi-hidden spot to semi-hidden spot, with no fear of us humans and little of the cats. We tried unsuccessfully to remove the little friend, but to no avail. The next morning I went to work, wishing there would not be a small corpse somewhere in my path. Luckily for me and for the mouse, Steven had let him out by the time I got home, by clever manipulation of space, time, and doors.

Mice are less frequent than other visitors, like birds. These usually come in with a cat attached, but most fly away. Some birds fly into windows and daze themselves. If I’m home and hear the thump, I try to check.

One year, when Mooshu was younger, he found a nest of nearly-fledged baby robins. We took the two we found behind the curtains to the vet in Rapid River, and when we came home he had brought in the third and last. I believe all three survived.

We had a year of snakes, large pine snakes who lived in the pole shop and storage area on the south of the house. They would loop in the pine pole rafters, or heap themselves into a tubular circle in the corner of a shelf. I loved having them there, but my opinion was not universal, and in any case, they moved on to somewhere else.

We’ve had bats, bunnies, squirrels, weasels, voles, snakes, wasps, and stray cats come in. It’s an interesting neighborhood, with everything from bear to turkeys, and the ever-present birds and deer. The humans who visit or live here seem to enjoy their company as much as I do.

So I’m trying to figure out what to do with the leopard frog. Is it time? Is “thawed” good enough? Pond or stream? Neither? Suggestions welcome. I’ll keep you posted.

On the other hand, last week in Ontonagon the Big Iron River was flowing from the last bridge to Lake Superior. This week, that part is re-frozen. Hmm.

Back to the seed catalogs. My prejudices: I prefer non-hybrids so that I can save seeds. I prefer supporting organic agriculture whenever possible. I love “heritage” varieties that connect me to, say, France in the 1700s. I hate bad grammar and typos. I distrust catalogs that give no Latin names. (Don’t they know them?) I live in Zone 4-5.

Forestfarm (541) 846-7269; www.forestfarm.com

The catalog request button on the website says “Request a Hardcopy of the Forestfarm catalog, which will put a great reference of thousands of plants at your fingertips.” They are not lying, not one little bit.

It’s a family-based nursery (am I detecting another bias here?), this one in Williams, Oregon. (I am not making this up, Williams kin, and it’s not why I love the catalog.) Forestfarm specializes in woody plants and trees, of all types, from all over the world. There are 21 varieties of bamboo. Now, most of them don’t grow here where I live in zone 4-5, but the growing zones are noted, and there are several hardy to zone 5.

There’s a similar abundance of most species in this book-sized catalog of more than 250 pages. That’s print. Pictures are occasional line drawings. Shrubs, trees, and vines make up the bulk of the listings. Other listings are Perennials, Ferns, Grasses and Sedges, Bamboos, Palms, and Fruit. I estimate that these nice people are in zone 7 or 8 – the catalog I have has them bemoaning temperatures of 9 degrees Fahrenheit. Which is pretty cold, I’ll admit, but not zone 5. Or 6. Or, really, 7. Ah, to be in Oregon!

Cultivation information is precise, the selection is awesome, and the testimonials in quotes from satisfied customers are as impressive as the fact that Forestfarm was awarded a Top 30 rating from Dave’s Garden Watchdog. And they include a myriad of great quotations throughout the book on plants, historical and culinary uses, or just great bits.

They need a proofreader. (I’d do it in exchange for plants, myself – I’d love the Blue Fountain Clumping Bamboo, which is $45 and currently outside of my budget. But I’d like to have it outside my bathroom window, providing a rustling screen from sun and sight.) Sometimes they leave things out of the listings, and the ampersands drive me nuts as a professional editor.

Get the catalog anyway. And consider supporting their efforts to create a bio-diverse home for Forestfarm on 30 acres of paradise. They’ve built this company since the 1970s, and seem to be thinking of all the right things.

I’m done with catalogs for a while – another installment next winter.

Of course it was a scam. About a year ago I’d gotten almost verbatim the same message from a friend in Marquette. She emailed the same day to tell everyone she’d been hacked into, slammed, or whatever it’s called. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t him, either.

When I talked to my friend (I’ll call her Natasha, since she said I could make her anyone), she said that when she finally got through to her mother, her mother answered the phone by saying, “Oh, just send the money!” Apparently they’d heard from people with whom they hadn’t talked in years. And it’s heartwarming that most wanted to help if there was a problem.

Natasha ended up doing the follow up on the problem. The account was suspended at Google, and then reinstated. Damage was minimized. The family didn’t receive extra money, and neither did the slammers.

So what next? Natasha decided to call the Michigan Attorney General’s Office to find out where one reports this kind of chicanery. Imagine her surprise when she was referred to the Secret Service – and told she could contact any of the three offices in Michigan: Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Saginaw.

Now you know. If someone messes with e-mail, they’ll have to answer to the Secret Service. Natasha and I speculated about it. Well, actually she had a theory that the FBI handles internal matters, the CIA handles external matters, and so the Secret Service handles those that involve both. The everything else category. Just like folk music.

Isn’t it an amazing world?

Here I sit, with no television (not on purpose; we used to get three stations, and then everything went digital) and soon, if the Tea Baggers get their way, no radio except the pop stations in the area. That’s my choice of rant and rhetoric, rock, country or oldies. Only one station is in the least independent. The others are owned by people out of our area, or don’t originate here at all.

And I don’t listen to them. I listen, when I listen at all, to National Public Radio, which brings me recipes and Car Talk, news and classical music.

I suspect that those people who say we don’t need NPR are in urban areas, perhaps with more choice than mine. Or that they don’t listen to radio at all (except maybe for those rants I mentioned earlier). So if they have what they want, why in the world should I be subsidized in what I want? After all, I don’t produce any oil.

As I’ve watched our country turn from hope to greed, I’ve been appalled at the negative spin put on our very best assets. Why should we trash the Arts? Why should we throw out our babies, very literally, (and women, the elderly, and the poor, of course,) to create a miniscule savings? Why are we still being asked to have bake sales to support schools, and all too often just sports programs at that, while throwing massive amounts of money at the military? Why is it suddenly wrong to be compassionate?

The discretionary spending that is being cut right now amounts to about 12% of the budget. If we cut it ALL, and it seems we might, we still won’t balance the budget. And we certainly can’t balance it if we give money to the wealthiest among us. That’s UNbalancing, isn’t it?

I’m old enough to have survived the 60s, trickle-down economics, Star Wars, Bill Clinton, and TWO Bushes. I’m cynical now, and I’d really like to see some figures that show that raping our culture will result in a new birth of culture and a dawn with birds singing sweetly in the background. My suspicion is that with the EPA gone, and the FDA neutered, with Big Business given everything it wants, we’ll be in a world where any birds left are eaten by the hungry masses, and drowned out by the sheer volume of noise that is the wail of people abandoned by the representatives they thought would help.

And THAT’S why they’ve trashed NPR. It wasn’t the cooking shows, or Car Talk. It was the light of another opinion, one that FOX and the conglomerate news stations ignore. I encourage you all to send a note or make a call to your Senators. Maybe some of them can still hear us.

This time I’ll look at another couple of fascinating catalogs. My prejudices: I prefer non-hybrids so that I can save seeds. I prefer supporting organic agriculture whenever possible. I love “heritage” varieties that connect me to, say, France in the 1700s. I hate bad grammar and typos. I distrust catalogs that give no Latin names (don’t they know them?) I live in Zone 4-5.

Bluestone Perennials 1-800-852-5243; www.bluestoneperennials.com

This is a big, glossy catalog of perennial flowers done right. The company is in Ohio, which works well for northern gardeners, and grows and ships all their own plants. Someday, I plan to go see their nursery, just like the third graders from their area and the International Plant Propagators Society, whom they hosted last year.

Each listing, with the Latin name, includes symbols that tell you if the plant produces cutting flowers, dries well, is evergreen, fragrant (I love this!), deer resistant, cultivation conditions, and bloom time, as well as the standard zone information.

You can buy plants in two ways, according to how Bluestone has classified them. Jumbos are “3-fers”, bought in groups of three (2.35” x 2.2” x 2.75” containers). Pots are 3.5” x 3.5” x 5” and sold singly. Both Jumbos and Pots may be purchased in spring and fall. Shrubs are shipped in the Pots size, but only in the spring. It’s another family catalog, although apparently the kids have moved on while staying involved in the catalog production, and they even have a listing of “thank yous” for the people who supplied their photos. Gotta love that, says the photographer in me.

I drool over the descriptions in this catalog, as well as the pictures. My friend Nancy says that she loves their plants, shipped in sturdy containers, because they grow well. Personally, I’m looking forward to the time my large food plantings are done (or nearly so) and I can indulge myself in a Mock Orange, azaleas, and peonies, plus the climbing rose for the fence..

Richters 1-800-668-4372. www.Richters.com

Wow! These people are all over the map, literally, from their base near  Toronto. This family business promotes home growers with seeds and plants from all around the world, and offers on-site classes in propagation, drying, beekeeping, and much more. Of course, that won’t do most of us much good, but it shows where their hearts are. And who knows? Road trips happen.

Listings include herbs from all over the world, vegetables from all over the world, some plants, dried herbs, roses, and books. Most entries tell a bit about the plant, and uses and cultivation information are provided with some. It’s a fascinating read for plant-o-philes (Is that a word? It is now!) and for those of us with “shotgun mentality” by which I mean the tendency to have a wide variety of interests instead of a single focus. It’s a family failing – er, trait.

Symbols to tell you the difficulty of seed propagation, uses (culinary, medicinal, etc.) and of course whether plants are perennial or annual, are displayed for each entry, and across the bottom of every few pages, which is great if you don’t want to turn back to the index each time you forget what the squiggle means. Prices are reasonable. A packet of cumin seeds is $1.50. A Cinnamon Yam plant is $4. They’re serious about shipping, and you can order trays of plant plugs (128 per tray priced at 120).

My favorite thing about Richters besides the shotgun approach is the Seed Zoo. They’re sending people around the planet to find disappearing plants, purchasing seed, and bringing it back to disseminate to us slackers who stay home and order our seeds. They offer dioscorea, or wild yam, in two varieties, more than a page of thyme, and seed for perennials like Good King Henry, a traditional English food plant, plus a poison ivy rescue kit.

Expand your horizons, if not your garden, and enjoy this one!

Today, I’m taking my accumulated years and experience in hand and bringing you – a review of seed catalogs. I’m an enthusiastic gardener, although not a great one, and I love seed catalogs. My kids have for years called them, “Mom’s garden porn”.

First, my biases. I prefer non-hybrids so that I can save seeds. I prefer supporting organic agriculture whenever possible. I love “heritage” varieties that connect me to, say, France in the 1700s. I hate bad grammar and typos. I live in Zone 4-5.

Okay, then. Here are a couple of my favorites.

St. Lawrence Nurseries (315) 265-6739; www.sln.potsdam.ny.us

Located in Potsdam, New York, squarely in the chilly part of the world, this family business specializes in northern climate fruit and nut trees, and carries some wildlings and berries. With six and one-half pages of apple varieties (about 24 to a page!) they include lots of antiques. Each apple is rated for use in baking, cider, eating, keeping, productivity, and more. Descriptions are good, and someone has actually proofread the catalog. (Although I’d love for them to change the photographs of their staff for next year. Illustrations are mostly nice line drawings.)

There aren’t nearly as many varieties of other fruits (this nursery is in Zone 3, after all), but they do carry a self-fertile pear tree and nut varieties like the Hazelburt, hardy to their zone. There are raspberries, a page of grapes, Staghorn Sumac, elderberries, edible honeysuckle, and lots more. Each is given a hardiness rating, from P for “May need protection – hardy only to -30 or -40 F”, to E for “Extremely hardy, to -50F or colder”.

In tone, this is a grandfather catalog, a little gruff, full of information. The guarantee begins, “We expect that you, the customer, will do your part to assure that your trees are planted in a timely fashion…” You won’t get a lot of slack if you screw up. On the other hand, the descriptions state clearly that your grapevine is a one-foot plant, planting directions are very thorough, and the rating on Dave’s Garden (http://davesgarden.com/products/gwd/) is overall satisfaction with a couple of dissenters.

Prices are reasonable, too. The grapevines are $9. Apple trees are $20 for a 2- to 4-foot tree. They don’t take credit cards, so you must send a check or money order. Last year, they sold out of everything well before their April 20 postmark deadline.

Pinetree Garden Seeds (207) 926-3400; www.superseeds.com

Gloucester, Maine, is home to this company, another family business started by Dick Meiners 32 years ago. It specializes in smaller packets of garden seeds at a lower cost than the big packages. They have lots, including sections for Continental, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern vegetables, herbs, flowers and plants. Prices run from under $1 to nearly $2 for a packet of seeds. Tomatoes, for instance, offer 20 seeds per package; Sub Arctic Plenty is $.95, while a couple of the hybrids are priced at $1.95. There are both hybrids and open-pollinated varieties.

Pinetree also offers a page of real tobacco (which you don’t find just anywhere), bulbs, potatoes, grapes, and more. The back of the catalog has garden products, books, and sundries like garden fairies, as well as four pages of soapmaking supplies.

I enjoy the informal tone and the stories about seed origins as well as the fact that my large garden costs less from these nice folks. They also give good information on cultivation and sometimes use of veggies. Last year, they, too, sold out of lots of things. Order early.

I’ll review Bluestone Perennials and Richters next time. Send me your favorite recommendations and I’ll check them out, too.