Holding pattern.

As most gardeners will tell you, January is a "holding pattern" month for them -- well at least for me. Here in Northern California, the nighttime temperatures have ranged between 22-32ºF for the past week, meaning the only gardening we have been doing for the last few weeks is religiously going out and covering our plants susceptible to the cold. And we were a little late with that too -- the new growth on our dwarf Mexican lime tree withered a little before we realized what was happening, as it got very cold very quickly in December.

For the last 2 weeks, the dwarf citrus trees and pepper plants have had a home in the garage as we patiently wait for the last threat of freeze/frost to pass so we can actually do something with them. The good news is as their soil has warmed, their leaves have begun to turn a nice dark green again. All of our potted plants on the North side of the house have been under the dog's lightweight blanket, covered and uncovered religiously each day by my wonderful husband who goes to work later than me. (Thanks hunny)

For me, the ONLY good thing about January is all of the wonderful gardening and seed catalogs I've received. It brings me such joy to think about and plan on graph paper what I want my vegetable garden and water wise side garden to look like. And then the cash register in my head starts keeping track of how much I want to spend, and I bargain with it so I can purchase "foundation plants" and build it with more later. January is tricky, and I usually end up getting into trouble.

For example, we decided our vegetable garden would be located on the un-landscaped Southwest-facing side of our new property. I drew out and designed the planters, and had remembered an article in an old Sunset magazine about stacked stone planters. Great idea! So we originally overzealously calculated 145 linear feet of veggie beds with stacked stone, and then realized for every 30 feet, stacked stone only 2' high will run approximately $750 (3 tons at approximately $250 a ton)...ouch. So we decided fewer beds to start with, made of composite lumber and these special corners should fill the fresh vegetable void we've had forever. This summer, we have food from our own garden!

My only complaint is that since I'm couped up in the house, the least that cable could provide me is some good gardening shows. But NooOOo. We dropped our cable to basic a few months ago, when HGTV decided to drop the "G" and substitute Real Estate shows. (Boring. About two years too late. Yawn.)

PBS isn't helping much either since I can never figure out when good gardening shows are on (I'm a KVIE member, so I get the monthly show calendar too.) But this morning after making coffee, I was delighted by watching the The Victory Garden. It was a breath of fresh air to actually finally see a gardening show -- it's been months! Now if only I could figure out when it was on the HD PBS channel..... I'm going stir crazy.