Is the noose around your green thumb getting tighter waiting for the new growing season to begin?  Mine certainly is!   My shiny new 2011 calendar is already filling up with little gardening notations on the sides of every month.  Jan is a time to start leafing thru all your gardening magazines to get ideas for the coming season and jotting down "ta-do" lists,  garden plans, and making up shopping lists.  My goal this month is to go thru and read all my magazines which are probably well over 300 jotting down what I need to know, and then donating most of them to our local library so that some other gardener will enjoy them next.   I try and go through several in the morning while having my cup of coffee and then later in the day when it's time to wind down, I go thru some while having my afternoon cup of calming tea.

  And it never fails.. Just as the nurseries are clearing out all their gardening supplies and plants and closing up shop, is when I get the "spring fever"!  WHAT?  I HAVE TO WAIT TILL APRIL?  NO!!!  I wanna dig NOW!  I wanna fill my shopping cart with all kinds of herbs and flowers!  The tables at the nursery are getting more empty as the days go by and i'm left with a hankering for gardening!  But, I DO have my calender filled with notes and my piles of magazines to still go through.  Next month I will start buying seeds and planning how my garden will look.  Some seeds might even need to be started indoors.. I count backward from April 1, which is the lucky day that all my babies will be planted in the rich Californian soil.  And me, i'll be the one digging, BY GOLLY!