They arrive with the holidays, bearing covers as bright as the most garish Christmas wrapping paper. The seed catalogs incite as much anticipation as any holiday gift. Bright scarlet tomatoes, deep green cucumbers, golden squash and gleaming corn adorn each one, promising garden abundance.

Each December I stack the catalogs on my desk to study after the holidays. During bleak January evenings, the pages light up the gloom and push back the chilly air. What to order this year? What did well last year, and where did I get the seeds? I dig around in my files for the receipts of last year's orders, and all the while my head is filled with memories of the sight and smell of the summer garden.

I have my favorite varieties. Savoy cabbage with its big wrinkled heads loves our soil, but so does the giant Late Flat Dutch and the small, early Stonehead. Lemon cucumbers, purple beans that surprise with their brilliant green color when cooked, ruby lettuce and rainbow chard are always on my order list.

And tomatoes! I love tomatoes, all varieties and can contentedly eat them at every meal. I especially like the old-time varieties like Mortgage Lifter and Brandywine, Mountaineer and Oxheart. Then there are all the others---Early Girl for first tomatoes (sometimes as early as June), little yellow pear and small round grape tomatoes, Roma for sauces and canning, Beefsteak and Golden Jubilee for their rich flavor, Lemon Boy for variety and Big Pinks for sweetness. Often we end up planting fourteen varieties to be sure we've covered all the possibilities-and then find we missed something that we both like.

The Totally Tomatoes catalog feeds my tomato lust; Gurney's provides surprising seeds like cotton and broom corn. Jung's, Henry Field's and Burpee's colors leap off the page. Then there is Vermont Bean for heritage varieties, Breck's for bulbs-the list is endless and the stack of slippery pages grows taller with each mail delivery.

I fill out the order blanks for each catalog, but when I add up the totals, I know something's got to go-a lot of things have to go, actually. I pare and pare until I'm down to what I must have, decide what I can buy from local feed stores (my preferred source) and finally send off orders that are much smaller than the original lists.

And then I wait. We get the greenhouse pulled together (it's a really simply affair of poles and plastic, but it works), find the seed trays, sort out the leftover and saved seeds from the previous year, and buy starting soil. The packages trickle in and the next growing year officially begins.

If you're suffering from mid-winter blues, order a few seed catalogs. They are guaranteed to lift your spirits and if you're lucky and willing to do the work, they may also load your table and lighten your grocery bill. Now that's a three way win.

Susanna "Granny Sue" Holstein is the mother of five sons and has 12 grandchildren. A librarian and professional storyteller, Granny Sue lives in Jackson County. She has several published works and a CD of stories and mountain ballads, and writes an online blog, hosted at www.grannysu.blogspot.com.