The Seed Catalog and the Surrendered Season

Every February, Helen Matsuda spread her seed catalogs across the kitchen table in her small Yakima Valley farmhouse and planned the spring. She had done it for thirty-seven years — charting rows, calculating frost dates, budgeting for fertilizer. She was meticulous. She was proud of it. But the February after her husband Jim died, Helen sat at that same table and couldn't pick up a pencil.…