The snow squall of seed catalogs that began at the end of the year has grown into a blizzard with promises of a perfect garden.

Catalogs have come from all over the country. Some are devoted exclusively to tomatoes, some to ornamental shrubs and trees, others to day lilies, several to every conceivable kind of garden tool, and most, to every type of fruit, vegetable and flower produced on this green earth, or at least in the Northern Hemisphere.

To me, there is no better time to dream of growing things than during a big snowstorm. That’s the perfect time to make out my seed order, too.

The snow roars off the roof, the garden shed is half buried in snow, and everything is white. Leafing through seed catalogs and choosing just the right variety of spinach, summer squash, string bean and everything else I hope to grow brings the hope and promise of spring and all that summer pledges.

One Maine-based catalog has luscious, red, shiny, ripe tomatoes gracing the covers. They are so beautiful that I can practically taste them. Such gorgeous tomatoes, and the memories of real tomato flavor from last year’s crop, makes me cuss the tomatoes we buy in the store throughout the winter.

Annual, perennial and flower bulb catalogs also fill the wicker basket resting on the living room carpet. There’re single blooming and re-blooming varieties. Every shade of pink, orange, red, yellow, purple and colors I had never dreamed of are pictured on glossy paper. If only the flowers we actually grew looked as spectacular as these.

The same holds true for the vegetables. While the corn gracing the covers of several seed catalogs are bright yellow with perfectly shaped kernels, the reality is usually somewhat different – the husks are shorter, the kernels sometimes sparse, and very often, there’s a little protein mixed with the corn in the form of those dastardly corn borers.

I usually have very good success with my tomato growing; however, I’m pretty much a stick in the mud when it comes to color. To me, tomatoes MUST be red, reasonably round, and except for a cherry tomato plant or two I grow each year for salads and the mandatory plum tomato grown to make paste and sauce, of pretty good size. None of these yellow tomatoes. How could they taste right? Then, in this one particular exclusively tomato catalog, there are pear-shaped yellow tomatoes, yellow cherry tomatoes (an oxymoron?) orange tomatoes, BROWN tomatoes, and those that are supposed to stay green.

I like to try something different every year. Last year it was sweet potatoes, which turned out pretty well but cost far more to grow than buying them while not having an exceptional flavor to match the higher price. Another year it was spaghetti squash, and this year, cantaloupes and radicchio to add to the perfect salad.

Lettuce, in its infinite varieties, along with tender spinach, zingy bunching onions, and hopefully, radicchio this year will most likely produce the fanciest, four-star restaurant quality salads as June turns into July.

But my favorites, and the things I always get carried away with, are the most impractical – several varieties of bright orange pumpkins, or red, or white or something called batwing that has a nearly black bottom in contrast with the bright orange top. Then there are the dozen packets of gourds in all shapes, colors, textures and sizes, and the happy, smiling faces of sunflowers.

Each year I plant several favorite varieties, then add a couple more, from the foot-high container flower, to the autumn-colored, 5-foot variety.

The seed orders are in the mail, the dreams, yet again of the perfect garden, are solidly in my head, while the reality tells me my garden won’t come close to the promises in the catalogs.

But that’s OK.

Seed catalogs are the brightest light in an otherwise long, cold winter.