Happy New Year gardeners near and far! Today when I woke up the lyrics to “In The Bleak Midwinter” were buzzing through my head, only it’s not very wintery feeling —- it’s 54° outside! (Climate change is real.)

In the bleak midwinter

Frosty wind made moan

Earth stood hard as iron

Water like a stone

Snow had fallen

Snow on snow on snow

In the bleak midwinter

Long, long ago

~ lyrics by Christina Rossetti

So new year, new gardening, what’s a gardener to do? Well first you order seed starting supplies from Gardeners Supply and if you order early enough, it all arrives in a giant box that is ridiculously big. (I did this around Christmas.)

Well and then you find a fun new gardening tool. I found mine at the Monticello catalog called the all in one garden pocket tool. It’s pretty nifty.

I have my seeds here already and waiting. Tomatoes and chili peppers. Red hatch and others, mostly New Mexico chili pepper. My husband picked out the tomato seeds including Midnight Snack. From Monticello I ordered wonderful old long sweet peppers called Jimmy Nardello’s sweet pepper and a cool little pear tomato called Red Fig tomato which actually hails from Philadelphia circa 1805. I am very excited about these tomatoes!

Then I checked out Mountain Flower Farm in Vermont which sells glorious peony roots. I ordered a couple for next October.

So Happy New Year gardeners! Now we begin the countdown to seed starting and spring! But I know I will be out in the garden here and there until then, as well as tending to the indoor jungle. Right now I have two pots of Amaryllis starting to come up as well as various Christmas cacti and my lemon trees.

Here’s to 2022 and another wonderful year of gardening!