January. Where for wert thou, January?

Where were your blowing winds and frigidly cold temperatures?

Where was your snow, your ice, your sleet?

What was that all about, January? Sunny days, moderate temperatures, even thunderstorms?

January.  You hardly made us suffer. You made us nervous with your mild and meek ways.

Now we fear, you, February.

We fear February because we are conditioned for winter. For snowed-in days, for bone-rattling cold, for ice, snow, sleet and cabin fever. If January didn’t deliver winter, surely February will.

Welcome, anyway, February.  You are one month closer to spring. Please be kind to us. Do not make us suffer for the sake of January.  Please. Do not.  But please give us a little more winter so we can appreciate spring when it arrives.

An extra day of winter, you say, February? Thank you.  One extra day of winter will be quite enough and will give me more time for my “to do” list.

To do in February:

Inventory seeds on hand and then buy more seeds than any one gardener could ever plant.

Clean up the sunroom and remove any evidence of indoor plants that died when I forgot to water them.  (Just one, I think, no need for panic.)  I won’t clean too much though – it makes the garden fairies wintering over in there nervous.

Line up someone to come and remove that suckering excuse for a large viburnum in The Shrubbery and maybe have them remove the other one that seems not to have survived two dry summers.  I need a clean planting palette and “remove large shrubs” is no longer on my list of fun gardening tasks to do. Instead, I’ve added to my list of fun gardening tasks “watch someone remove large shrubs while I dream about what to plant there instead”.

Contact garden designer for assistance with The Shrubbery which isn’t quite the garden area I want it to be yet.  I must also thank her again for leaving me that book, The Garden that I Love.

Prepare a little presentation on “Grow Vegetables – No Excuses”.   There really is no excuse to not grow a few vegetables, if you are any kind of gardener at all.  One would think that it is part of every gardener’s DNA to grow vegetables, but apparently it is not. 

Finally, if February turns out to be meek and mild like January, weed the vegetable garden. (Now that’s funny. I am conditioned by years, decades, of Midwest gardening to not even think about doing something in the garden in February, even if we have some nice days.  Though, I could be convinced to watch someone remove some large, suckering shrubs.)