Read by Michael Flamel

“Bee, I’m afraid I have to work late tonight. I’ve got a whole batch of radio scripts to write, and I’m way behind. You go on to bed. I’ll come up later.”

“All right, Pat, but don’t work too hard. You’ll need some rest.”

My wife was fooled, I was sure of it. So what if I’d been using that lame excuse for two weeks now? Her response didn’t have the slightest tinge of suspicion.

She trotted right up the steps, leaving me alone in my office.

As soon as I heard the bed­room door shut, I headed over to the top row of the bookshelf and slyly pulled out my collection.

Late into the night, I ogled the beauties in those thumbworn pages.

The descriptions alone set my heart to racing: “Mouthwatering.” “Extra large.” “Per­fectly smooth and firm.”

It was wonderful. And I kept getting away with it.

The only problem was, even though I went to bed late and sated every night, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned, unable to get com­fortable. It must have been my conscience.

But I didn’t stop. I kept staying up. I was trapped.

Yes, it’s true, I was another victim of SCP: Seed Catalog Pornography. Who could resist staring at that fat, frame-filling BeefMaster VFN, with its promise of “unbelievable quantities of delicious ripe tomatoes, up to a fabulous 2 pounds apiece”? How could I pass by Nancy Tate, a “white-seeded, 25-pound watermelon whose sweet, pink-red flesh has good flavor even close to the rind”?

Finally, I had to quit. I couldn’t keep hiding like this. So I filled out the order forms, mailed the checks for all those little seed packets, then stashed the catalogs for good. But, strange, I still didn’t sleep well.

A few weeks later, three UPS trucks pulled up to the house, opened their bay doors and unloaded box after box, and plant after plant. What was going on here? I hadn’t ordered all this stuff! Flowering plum trees? Heaths and heathers? Gypsophilia Bristol Fairy?

When Becky came home that night, she didn’t say a word about the boxes barricading the porch. I went upstairs and collapsed on the bed, trying to puzzle this out. As I lay there, I noticed that, you know, the bed really did feel uncomfortable. Did something besides guilt cause all those hard-sleeping nights?

That’s when I reached under the mattress and found them. I pulled out pile after pile that plied hostas with “handsome mounds, puckered textures, and creamy centers.”

That flaunted full-color roses with “well-formed, fully double blooms, and proud high centers.” Here, here was the stuff of true garden pornography: those nasty nursery catalogs. ❖