sunday

I spent all evening positively glued to the Smithsonian Library's Seed Catalogue of cards from the 1830s to the 1930s.

Here are a just a few of my favorites (& all five hundred are just as good)!



This one is my absolute favorite. I hope that when I have a collection of words published, the cover would look just as beautiful and sweet. It reminds me an awful lot of Countee Cullen's books of poetry and so many of the books on the rare books floor of the Strand (one of my favorite places ever and a never-ending source of inspiration).



I imagine that a lot of thought and love went into these catalogue covers, yet after perusing through every image, it seems that an equal amount of effort and skill was put into each one. I love to think of a young farmer leafing through one of these, dreaming about which seeds he will plant and harvest while his rosy-cheeked wife carefully picks out the flowers she wants to grow in her garden. I've been dreaming of what I want to grow when I have a little cottage nestled between the forest and the sea (near a very stoic lighthouse, of course). There would be a whole lotta vegetables, herbs, flowers, and fruit trees! I'll save that list for another day though.

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