My Scrooge-like attitude began earlier than usual this year, because I was down in bed with the flu and started idly paging through the many garden catalogs that now fill my mailbox. This first batch includes a bunch of special catalogs aimed at telling us what gardeners want for Christmas.
The first thing that caught my eye and raised my ire was a page of amaryllis. Now I have nothing against amaryllis. I love amaryllis! I plan to order a crate full, force them and pot them up in baskets, surrounded with a picket fence of paperwhites and covered with Spanish moss to give as Christmas gifts. Flowers in December and January are gifts beyond price.
Apparently, the catalog people thought so, too. I checked a lovely white double bloom - $26.95. I looked to see what exotic container it might be in to merit such a price. It was a green plastic nursery pot. For the basket I could pay $10 more.
I can buy that same amaryllis for about $4.50 if I shop carefully, and make a similar basket out of twigs from my own shrubs. But hey - 'tis the season to be spending - so why should people put time and love into their gifts when they can just flash a credit card and let someone else do it?
Another gift suggestion that troubled me was a gorgeous set of handpainted tools. I've used items from this product line, and they are good quality tools. It's too bad that if you actually try to use them you will destroy the painting that makes them so expensive. So you have a choice of letting them be useful, chipped and ugly, or letting them be more pretty and useless garden clutter.
I won't even mention the tools I've seen in sterling silver or rosewood at over $1,000 apiece, or the boxes of greens and trimmings at outlandish prices that are free for the taking should we just wander into most of our yards with a pair of pruning shears.
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