Dreary Winter "Gardening"

What a treat - the mail on a rainy February day brought my two gardening magazines! Fine Gardening and Garden Gate - page after page of sunny flowers and happy vegetables. It really makes me want to get out in the dirt.

Since the garden is uncovered (no snow since November!) it looks pretty nasty with the last of the dead flower stalks waving at me, judgmentally. The Fall came up so fast, I didn't get everything cleaned up before that November snowfall so now the spent seedheads and dead grasses seem to rebuke me as I sit inside, warm and  dry.

But the February gardening mags are tempting me to start the winter planning we gardeners love to do. This is the only time of the year that my garden is perfect: the flower combinations look great, the soil is moist and weed-free (in my winter mind, I've maintained the mulch I intend to put down in late Spring), and the new veggie seedlings are sturdy and just waiting for some warm nights to explode into juicy produce.

You can tell this is a fantasy since I'm imagining warm Central Oregon nights - if any arrive, it won't be until August! My Summer garden, in reality, is a field of Conestoga wagon/hoop houses, opening and closing every day, trying to capture the daytime heat to ward off the night time cold.
But hope springs eternal in the gardener's breast - and in her fingertips and back muscles!

If you need to kill a few hours, wallowing in gardening fantasies, here's the place:  http://www.finegardening.com/blogs