Winter gardening: Things to do

While Mother Nature insists on covering everything with white and making it too cold to even want to go outside, there are still things you can do to enjoy "gardening." I've put together my own short list of activities to keep myself tuned to gardening. I find I'm a little more prepared in the spring when it's time to break out the gardening spades if I take the time to enjoy this activity.
When the wind is howling and the snow is blowing, create a 'garden book.' You may want to buy a scrapbook to compile your ideas, however dollar stores have other less expensive alternatives. Dig out all those old garden magazines that have 'a couple of good ideas' and start snipping. You'll end up with those good ideas all in one place and then you can toss out the magazines that have been taking up space.
How you compile them and categorize them is up to you, however, you may want to consider grouping them into "sunny, part sun/shade, and shady" categories first and height/colour segments second. This book will be something you can refer to for planning purposes this spring. You will want to print out pictures you've taken all year long, from your own digital files. Those pictures will end up being the most important part of a garden scrapbook as they will hopefully have been taken at each stage of growth. Adding tips for fertilizing, light and water requirements will make it a "gardening at a glance" reference.
Making a garden book will remind you to track your plant sources and place your order before spring. Make sure to leave enough space on each page for notes as well.
Another source of information, of course, is the Internet. If there are plants you want to add to your garden and you don't have the information available, find that info online and print it out with pictures. All of the Lazy Gardener info is online as well on my blog and you can search through the archives there for any of the back articles from this column. Feel free to use any of the photos from the blog as they are all for public use. Next week we are going to look at things to do in the month of February to get ready for the gardening season, so, toodles for now.