Finish work, head home. Check that, creep home. OK, that's a stretch, drive home carefully. This evening on my way home from work, we were picking up about a half inch of fresh snow. Nuisance snow. The kind of snow that's just enough to make you get out of the car and sweep the driveway before you drive on to park for the night.

That's how my evening started. Then I took Molly the Black Lab out to get the mail. On the way back to the house I noticed a catalog in the mail. GREAT I thought to myself, I'll just stop by the recycling bin before I head into the house and drop it off and wait!

There it was. I'm not a gardener by any stretch, but I could almost hear the angelic chorus of angels singing in the background. The Gurney's Seed and Nursery Company 2018 Sprint Catalog. Here, in the middle of February, in the middle of the heartland in the middle of a snow squall was a sign. It was a sign of warmer weather to come.  I was intrigued.

Did you know you can get Red Pontiac, potatoes?  Yep, everybody's favorite red according to the catalog. Evidently they had a 'thing' for automobiles of the '70's. You can also buy the Pinto Gold, or the blight resistant Kennebec. Yep, they have a potato named after my home town of Kennbec, South Dakota. Dang! Now I'm slurping down homemade chili and starting to tingle with excitement.

Speaking of tingling. The writer who penned the names for the corn evidently have one thing on their mind.  Listen to some of the names.  Bodacious, Gotta Have It and Inferno. But wait, there's more. You can also order Sugar Baby and Rattlesnake Watermelon.

I was digging the names. But more and more I found myself digging the fact that I was now thinking ahead. Thinking to warmer times. Growing grass. Warming ground. Spring seemed a long way off as I drove home from work. But the Gurney's catalog gave me something more that something to read while dining tonight. It gave me hope. Thank you Gurney's.

Note: At the time I wrote this, I also got to wondering, what happened to the old Gurney's building in Yankton, South Dakota. If you live there and know, let me know. Shoot me an email anytime. jdcollins@kikn.com.

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