132 pages of Spring

Last year' Baker Creek Seed Book

Winter kicked into high gear this past weekend here in St.Louis. On Saturday night, a cold front came through that dropped a couple inches of powdery snow and frigid temperatures on us. The high today was 19 degrees, with a low of 3 degrees! For the next 7 days, the high temperatures aren't expected to get above freezing. While this may not impress anyone from the mountain states or the great white north, it feels pretty damn cold to this Missouri native. Not unseasonably so, mind you. We seem to get a couple of these cold snaps a winter, although they usually don't show up until January or February. Never the less, everything is pretty frozen around here. The heat lamp in das Cluck Haus went on yesterday, and the girls got some extra straw to help keep them warm.

In spite of the cold, however, it feels pretty sunny in the house right now. Today I got the 2011 seed catalog from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. I order pretty much all of my seeds online, but there's something about holding an actual magazine in your hands that's nice. It reminds me of looking at old Burpee catalogs at my Grandma Lorenz's house as a kid. The Baker Creek seed book trumps anything Grandma ever had though. It's large formatted, square bound, and chock full of big, beautiful pictures of a bazillion different kids of fruits, vegetables, flowers, and herbs. It's like a coffee table book. And the kicker is, they send one to you for FREE. In a day when most places will charge you $5 or more for a raggedy black&white catalog on newsprint paper, Baker Creek gives away something that you might buy at a bookstore. Go to their website and look around. Then request one of their catalogs. I guarantee it'll take the edge off of winter's cold when it shows up in the mail.

Jere, Sasha, and Emilee Gettle, and the single ugliest outfit ever worn in human history