The wind is howling, the snow is flying. Christmas tree lights twinkle from the rooftops, and smells of Christmas baking waft through the house. Someone checks the mail. Along with a few Christmas cards, various bills, and advertisements, is the hope of all gardeners; The Seed Catalogue.

On its cover is a picture of the most scrumptious plump red tomato ever grown, and a perfect varicolored zinnia. Leafing through it I admire the wonderful, colossal snapdragons and exclaim over the marvelous head of lettuce. Even the radishes are gorgeous in their red and white skins. But now is not the time. I reluctantly put it aside until after Christmas. It is too soon to be thinking about spring.

The holiday's over, the new year is full of new hope and great aspirations. So on a dark, snowy, school-closed day in January, it is time for my daughter and me to dream a bit. By this time fifteen or twenty more catalogues have found their way through the snow into the house.

I pick up the first one. What a selection. Tomatoes, (ripe when green), blue potatoes, (got to try some of those), watermelon, (so what if it doesn't grow well up here), Scarlet Runner Beans (first saw those at the Genesee Country Village-with beautiful red flowers-maybe mine will bloom this year). I start making a list. One catalogue down, nineteen more to go. I look at pictures of peas, beautiful full pods of tender green peas. (There's got to be a way to keep the deer from eating them) and the lettuce-red lettuce, oak leaf lettuce, head lettuce. (Didn't the woodchuck get those last year?) My optimistic nature wins. It's going be different this year.

Meanwhile standing at the edge of the woods, the doe is telling her half grown fawns, "That's the place I been telling you about. Those humans serve us well. They plant the most tender succulent plants, and what's more, they get rid of all the yucky stuff. Those humans work really hard."

And curled up, sound asleep in the warm comfortable hole under the brush pile, the woodchuck has visions of lettuce, cabbage, and fresh peas. He knows just where to find them-my garden.

Ah, but this time I have a dog. Molly will keep the critters out of my garden. She's a good dog, she is.

January crawls into February and it is now time to forget about the slippery snow-covered roads and send out the seed orders. Reality sets in. There is no way we have room to plant three varieties of corn. And please, let's settle on the bush-type pumpkins and cucumbers. None of this vine stuff running all over the lawn. Got to cut out some of these packages of lettuce and peas-They only grow well in cool weather. And with our luck we will have an extra warm spring.

Then I get out the calculator-This adds up to how much? I feel sick. I remember my father called this disease 'lack of mon-ney' .Got to cut out some of the packages of marigolds. And one package of zucchini should be plenty. Wasn't I swamped with that vegetable last year? Or was it the year before?

At last, my desires match my budget. I send in the orders.

By March the seeds come dribbling in. Piles of snow lie around the house. We're not going to plant anything soon. Did I really order four onion sets-a hundred plants in each set.?

However-It's time to plant the seeds we're going to try inside-mostly marigolds and tomatoes. We want to save a little money here. Read in the paper that plants are going to be expensive this year.

By April we're wondering if we should have saved our money and bought plants from the nurseries. The seed tomatoes are such puny things. And the marigolds won't come up. Day after day I check for something-anything green. The peat pots laugh at me.

And the snow is still piled around the house. Will spring ever come?

To pass the time, I start to read the seed packages. What do they mean fertilize your lawn in April? Should I get out the snow blower before spreading the fertilizer, or should I sprinkle the fertilizer over the snow where the garden is supposed to be? Forget that. Where did this writer come from? Oh, Connecticut. I thought with these instructions, it had be Florida.

At last. The snow melts, we have some warmish weather. Time to plant the early stuff.-lettuce,-radishes,-cabbage, and peas.

Then it begins to rain. And rain. And rain. The water stands on the ground around the garden. The water covers the garden. Of course. The seed is washed away. And nothing grows. The deer think the few peas that manage to hang in there are absolutely delicious.

We wait to plant. And wait. And wait.

The deer also are getting impatient. They took out the tulips last year. Deer don't like daffodils. (I planted lots of those last fall.) One of those beautiful animals stepped on the plowed ground and sank a foot into the mud. I wasn't the least bit sorry for it.

I tell Molly it's perfectly all right to chase deer out of the yard. She has a wonderful time. So do the deer. It's snatch a bite, see a dog, run like the dickens. Wait a bit till dog is in the house. snatch some more bites. See a dog, run-

As far as the woodchuck goes, Molly carefully shows me its den. When she actually sees it, she can't be bothered to chase it. So much for having a good dog.

Of course the rain stops eventually. And we plant again.

Meanwhile a great army is gathering its forces. Every bug, beetle, tent caterpillar, and cabbage butterfly have marked us for number one suckers.

We have this thing against poisoning our food with chemicals. We do not like to spray. We buy preying mantis. They eat each other. We try ladybugs. They fly away home to our neighbor's garden.

And so it goes. One little disaster after another, all summer long. Why do we bother? I don't know. There's something peaceful about putting seed in the ground and watching it grow. Somehow we feel at one with the world. And we do get some fresh vegetables out of our efforts. Different ones each year.

There was the year of the radish-How many ways can you eat a radish? (Finally found a way to sauté' them in olive oil). Then there was the year of the zucchini (zucchini bread, zucchini cake, zucchini cookies, zucchini relish, zucchini pickles, zucchini soup, boiled zucchini, fried zucchini, zucchini done on the grill), and the year of the tomato (sliced tomatoes, chili sauce, tomato sauce, tomato jelly, tomato juice, canned tomatoes). Oh yes, then there was the year of the corn. (Two three-inch cobs with a suggestion of kernels on them.) We do enjoy fresh vegetables when they actually grow.

And so next Christmas when the seed catalogues come rolling in, we'll try again. Right now we're looking for plastic life-sized owls. We were told if you move them around the garden you can fool the woodchucks some of the time.

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