With our favorite season of all approaching...drum roll please... yes, thatÂs right plant catalog season is but a few short weeks away I find myself oddly uninspired. I wonder if I am alone in feeling that the possible future consequences of spending whether it be personal or work related have become so magnified that I am frozen in indecision. Living in the land of "What If" is numbing and the news wonÂt let me escape the reality that two of our three daughters have degrees in economics and work in finance; one has just escaped the third round of layoffs at Citi Bank in Manhattan. So as the politicianÂs debate which businesses we the middle class tax payers should bail out I canÂt help but think they should take a page from any parent with young adults trying to make it on their own, frankly we were able to measure the economic down turn earlier than Congress based on the timing of the MUCH earlier call for more money from our daughter who is a junior in college.

I have been planning for at least one year a tree removal /large shrub transplant project this late winter/early spring, but frankly the "What IfÂs" have taken all the desire out of it. This is also the time of year that I love to buy new gardening books and last summer when I heard about Dirrs second edition of "The Reference Manual of Woody Plant Propagation" coming out before Xmas I was all excited but somehow now I have lost the lust.

Have you too lost the lust to purchase plants and related materials? kt