Joys of the Season ~ Vintage Seed Catalogs

Since all I've blogged about tedious things like engineering of water systems, and big ugly stumps, I thought I'd take a moment for some gardening inspiration. One of the best parts of spring, is just about when you've read your fill of mail order seed catalogs, the Vintage catalog trade get's into full swing on ebay. I try to limit my purchases of vintage seed catalogs to certain criteria, but I never limit myself on collecting the photo files. If it inspires me, I clip it and save it. Some of the photo files are even good enough that I've printed them out and framed them to hang on my side porch. In fact, seed catalogs aren't the only place you will find really good gardening illustrations. farm and home magazines from the 1920's right up through the 1940's have some great cover illustrations. As a bonus, some of the magazine covers can be found in prints on some of the larger poster print sites. Here, in no particular order, are a very few of my favorites: (BTW, you can click the photo to enjoy a larger version)