Yesterday an unfamiliar catalog arrived; it is from a nursery that sells various seeds and seedlings through the mail. My wife flipped through it, mentioning this and that, with oohs and ahs over some of the pictures.
I haven’t looked at it yet. I am afraid. To me, all catalogs are somewhat like pornography, and take my mind to a weird place where I imagine how my life would be different if the objects shown inside the catalog were present and available to me in my everyday life. I can spend a happy hour with a catalog from an office supply store, thinking of fun things I could do with, for example, twenty-five pounds of manila envelopes or a box of green hi-lighters. A wine and cheese catalog is more exciting to me than a catalog from Victoria’s Secret or Frederick’s of Hollywood because I know that the models, who are essential to most fantasies about the successful use of their offerings, are not included with every piece of lingerie. With the wine and cheese catalog, on the other hand, I know that if I order something, then when it arrives everything I need will be in the box. In contrast, the Victoria’s Secret catalogs should include a warning, saying “Claudia Schiffer not included. Your wife may legally refuse to wear anything you buy from us. Professional models used on a closed course. Don’t try this at home, kids!” The Victoria’s Secret catalog may be excellent fapping material, for those who prefer such form of fapping fodder, but it offers a fantasy that can’t be made real, at least not in the O household. It might be different if I was married to a svelte twenty-year-old fashion model, or at least someone who would even consider wearing a thong, but that’s not how things shook out.
I’ve been starting to think about what to plant in the garden this year, so this catalog is full of temptations. To sweeten the deal, they are offering $25 off my first purchase–if the first purchase totals less than $25, it’s free. This sounds like Claudia Schiffer telling me she’ll let me kick the tires for free, knowing full well that she’ll get it back, and more, during the test drive.
I do want some sort of flowering bush or climbing vine I can use to make a border along the back wall, so I will be scanning through the catalog later, hopefully with adult supervision. The difficulty of finding the proper plant is that there is an enormous tree that shades this wall most of the day for all of the Summer and Fall. I don’t know why, but things that flower seem to typically require a lot of sunlight, and sunlight is something our yard generally lacks. The trees are beautiful–I can’t complain about that–but they do limit my options.
Time will tell if the catalog is full of dry facts and figures, or whether it’s the Victoria’s Secret of garden catalogs, showing only the finest specimens, photographed in perfect light and weather, posed in the carefully manicured garden of a regal manse. In that case, it will just be gardening pr0n, and I should be able to resist it without effort. If it tells me things like soil type, sunlight indices, temperate zones, growth and spread rates, and proper fertilizer mixes and watering regimen for optimal growth and flowering, then I’m doomed.
