Onward to the New Year

Well, I finally decided to update my blog. I can list all the excuses, but it boils down to this. My holiday season was ridiculously busy this year, and there's not a darn thing to see outside in my garden. December was just the drabbest month. It didn't really snow, the skies were rainy and foggy, and it was just generally dreary. Blah.

 But with the arrival of the new year came the arrival of real winter time. It's been snowing, and bitter cold, just like you'd expect from winter. Brrrrr! Sometimes I think that I'll never feel warm again.

I'm ready to finally settle into my winter cocoon. Honestly, I'm looking forward to things turning a little bit dull. You see, we just held our annual wine party last night, and I'm exhausted! Don't get me wrong, it was a blast, but now I can call my time my own. We normally hold it between Christmas and New Year's, but this year we moved it off the holiday just a bit and that turned out to be a good move. However, it means that I still haven't been able to wind down from the "holidays". I promise, today I did nothing! And it felt wonderful.

In trying to inspire myself to write about gardening, I scanned through last year's pictures for ideas. Instead, I got a little lost there in my photo files. Heavy sigh. Sometimes I can put it out my mind for awhile, but seeing all those flowers reminded me just exactly what I'm missing.

 I guess that just means that one of my first winter projects will be sorting through the seed catalogs. Oh darn.

I'm actually ahead of the game with next year's seeds. I already bought some of my favorites so that they wouldn't sell out before I got to them. After all, I couldn't do without my beloved Queen Red Lime zinnias. I wonder what other treasures I'll find.

There are a couple of other winter projects to keep me occupied, and they are actually related to gardening. That's how I keep my sanity till the garden starts blooming again. I need to gather vegetable recipes for the Master Gardener farmer's market, and I need to tweak my butterfly gardening presentation before I present it to the garden club next month. Of course there are plenty of other non-garden related craft projects too. Before I know it, the first iris reticulata will pop up, and the next garden season will begin again. I can make it.