A new year has arrived, and that leaves most of us thinking about the passage of time.
For most of us the passage of time is marked by things we do more than the flipping of a page on a calendar.
Getting out on the golf course, or dropping a hook in the water the day fishing season opens is a better mark of the arrival of spring than hitting a date on the calendar.
So Jan. 1, is here.
One of the usual signs of a new year I can clearly remember from when I was a young child on the farm was the arrival of seed catalogues early in the new year.
It seemed that when the Christmas tree went out, and life settled into the monotony of the long days of January, the catalogues would start to arrive.
For a child the books didn't mean all that much, but I can certainly remember my grandparents and mother pouring over the pages.
My grandparents lived in town as I grew a bit older, but the garden was still essential. It was both hobby, and a way to produce food.
Living on a farm a garden was something that was a cornerstone of what ended up on the kitchen table all year long.
A root cellar was filled each fall with a couple of dozen feed bags filled with potatoes, carrots wrapped in newspaper, parsnips, turnips and shelves of canned fruit, jam, and jelly.
And that full cellar started with the arrival of the seed catalogues.
It wasn't that our garden was filled with new and different things. The tried and true filled the cellar, and I can't say our table was a place of particularly adventurous meals.
There was one year kohlrabi was tried, and I vaguely recall it grew like a weed, but I can't say I recall it on the table. That might be a case of a youngster being fussy, or just that it was not something anyone liked, and it ended up being a treat for the livestock.
But there were certainly lots of discussions about new varieties.
It wasn't unusual for long telephone talks to take place with neighbours, a seed catalogue close at hand.
Today the family garden is much more a rarity than it was when I was a child. Back then everyone had one as a matter of course.
That isn't the case now. You can drive a lot of back alleys in a town to find a garden that actually means filling a deep freeze with produce in the fall.
Still seed catalogues are of interest to many.
There is something of a renascence in terms of gardening.
It is less about filling the cellar and deep freeze as a stable of the food supply, and more about taste experiences.
Today many gardeners are looking to grow fruits and vegetables not normally grown on the Canadian Prairies. We have seen the emergence of grapes, cherries and even apricots being grown here.
That's far different from strawberries, currents and raspberries which were staples of my grandparents fruit patch.
Gardeners are also more apt to opt for heritage varieties of vegetables, seeking eating experiences that remind of past days, or because they deem them more flavourful than more recently developed hybrids.
Living in a suite means no garden these days, but when a new year arrives, thoughts do turn to growing food that always seems to taste better than that bought in a store.
