Seed Savers: It's Here! It's Here!

Oh happy day, my Seed Savers Exchange catalog has arrived!  It's so nice to sit with a steamy cup of tea, a kitty on your lap, "helping" you turn the pages of this veggie porn catalog,  and dreaming of the possibilities while the rainstorm germinates the wildflowers outside.  It doesn't matter that melons rarely develop in our powdery mildew infested coastal climate, just reading the descriptions keep me falsely optimistic:

"Charantais:  Considered to be the most divine and flavorful melon in the world.  Smooth round melons mature to a creamy grayish-yellow with green stripes.  Sweet, juicy salmon flesh.  Typically the size of a grapefruit and weighs about 2 pounds, perfect for two people.  Ripe melons have a heavenly fragrance."

By the time I'm at the end of the description, I am hypnotized.  I must have that melon!  These sorts of purchases never exactly turn out well, although my Dad in Sacramento celebrated an enormous warty French pumpkin from seeds I bought a few years ago.  Mine was a quarter of the size of his.  No fair!
 

At the very least this will jump-start my progress on creating a series of raised vegetable beds.  Then I can buy my seeds and support this amazing non-profit farm which works to collect and save our heirloom seeds.  Seeds can be purchased from the farm on their website, but members receive access to the Yearbook, which is basically a phone book for heirloom seeds collected and distributed by other members.  And for the first time, it's now available online!  While building raised beds can be daunting, I think the hardest part of all this will be deciding which seeds to buy!